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DUKE 
UNIVERSITY 
LIBRARY 


Gift  of 

BUZ  Schznck 


©  1978  by  International  Publishers  Co.,  Inc. 

All  rights  reserved 
First  edition,  1978 
Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

Library  of  Congress  Cataloging  in  Publication  Data 

Myerson,  Michael,  1940- 

Nothing  could  be  finer. 

Includes  bibliographical  references. 

I.  Afro-Americans  -Civil  rights    North  Carolina. 
2.  Civil  rights    North  Carolina.    3.  North  Carolina- 
Politics  and  government    1951-   4.  Chavis.  Ben, 
1948-    5.  Clergy    North  Carolina  -  Biography. 
I.  Title. 

EI85.93.N6M93  323.4'09756  78-17407 

ISBN  0-7178-0553-0 
ISBN  0-7178-0498-4  pbk. 


it?? 


Contents 


A  ckno  wledgements 

page  v 

Introduction 

page  3 

One 

page  9 

Two 

page  47 

Three 

page  95 

Four 

page  139 

Five 

page  167 

Afterword 

page  219 

Notes 

page  235 


This  one's  for  Charlene  of  course 


A  cknowledgemen  ts 


Naturally  the  author  accepts  full  responsibility  for  the  words  you  are 
about  to  read,  but  credit  must  be  shared  by  many  people,  too  many  to  list 
here.  Still,  special  mention  should  be  made  of  the  staff  of  the  National 
Alliance  Against  Racist  and  Political  Repression,  whose  patience  in  the 
face  of  great  impatience  allowed  this  work  to  proceed.  Under  the 
leadership  of  executive  secretary  Charlene  Mitchell,  they  include  Kay 
Anderson,  Linda  Edwards,  Lucia  Faithfull-Stevenson,  Sandra  Frankel, 
Malvice  Jefferson,  Bonnie  Kanter,  Frederica  Lawson,  Anne  Mitchell, 
Stefanie  Mitchell,  Maria  Ramos,  Marj  Sutherland,  Nancy  Sutula  and 
Ruth  Yates. 

So  many  folks  in  North  Carolina  were  generous  with  their  time  and 
knowledge,  showing  their  famous  hospitality  to  this  Northern  boy.  The 
entire  Chavis  family  and  the  Paul  family  have  been  particular  inspira- 
tions. 

Finally,  I  owe  enormous  debts  to  Henry  Winston,  Laura  Brown, 
Elaine  Markson  and  my  parents  who,  each,  in  very  special  ways,  made 
this  book  possible. 


Digitized  by 

the  Internet  Archive 

in  2014 

https://archive.org/details/nothingcouldbefiOOmyer_0 


Introduction 


Esse  Quam  Videri  [  To  Be  Rather  Than  to  Seem] 
North  Carolina  state  motto 


By  the  time  Ben  Chavis  and  the  Wilmington  10  entered  prison  in 
February  1976,  it  had  come  to  this  in  North  Carolina:  the  state's  license- 
tag  slogan,  "First  in  Freedom"  was  meeting  with  protest.  Some  local 
folks,  appalled  by  the  nation's  largest  death-row  population  at  Raleigh's 
Central  Prison,  taped  over  the  slogan.  For  which  they  were  arrested. 
Misdemeanors  in  North  Carolina  bring  sentences  as  high  as  two  years  at 
Central. 

With  the  first  Southern  president  of  this  century  now  in  the  White 
House,  new  national  attention  has  been  paid  the  South.  Much  has  been 
written  about  the  New  South,  how  the  tradition  of  racist  terror  has  been 
abandoned  by  a  new  breed  of  public  officials  ushering  in  a  bright  era. 
Discrimination  is  now  an  occasional  occurrence,  lynching  a  distant 
memory.  North  Carolina,  it  is  said,  best  exemplifies  this  reformist  spirit. 
But,  like  rouge  on  a  corpse,  the  New  South  is  little  more  than  cosmetic  to 
prevent  the  reality  of  North  Carolina  from  showing  through. 

The  gap  between  "to  be"  and  "to  seem"  in  this  state  suggests  some  of 
that  same  eerie  incongruity  that  the  Polish  writer  Tadeusz  Borowski 
portrayed  of  life  in  Auschwitz — the  Red  Cross  van  transporting  gas  to 
the  "showers,"  the  German-occupied  cities  with  stores  filled  with  books 
and  religious  objects  while  smoke  from  the  crematoria  hovered  over  the 
trees.  In  this  sense  alone,  the  New  South  doesn't  seem  as  repressive  as  it 
really  is. 

Barbara  Howar  finds  symbolic  of  North  Carolina  the  tragedy  of  a 
childhood  friend,  "the  daughter  of  old  Monty,"  who  became  a  drug 
addict  and  now  lives  out  her  days  in  the  attic  of  the  family  mansion, 
spaced  out  on  morphine.  Her  father  is  on  the  boards  of  the  state  hospitals 
and  will  tell  the  curious  that  his  daughter  has  "back  trouble."1 


Introduction 


In  1584,  two  English  settlers  published  a  booklet,  extolling  the  beauties 
of  what  is  now  North  Carolina.  They  called  it  "the  goodliest  land  under 
the  cope  of  heaven,"  a  description  used  today  by  the  tourist  merchants  to 
drum  up  business.  Business  seems  good:  Tourism,  the  state's  third  largest 
industry,  accrues  about  a  billion  dollars  a  year.  By  mobile  home  and 
backpack,  the  citizenry  comes  to  sup  on  the  goodliest  land's  Blue  Ridge 
with  its  azalea,  rhododendron,  mountain  laurel  and  wild  orchids;  the 
Outer  Banks  with  the  largest  coastline  of  any  state,  after  California  and 
Florida;  the  stockcar  racetracks  that  originated  in  the  mountains  with 
enterprising  young  moonshiners  who  had  to  flee  the  "revenooers."  The 
fauna  and  flora  of  North  Carolina  are  seductive.  Valleys  are  misty  in  the 
dawn,  willows  weep  for  us  in  the  East.  Tear  off  the  page,  it's  already 
September.  The  more  alert  tourist  in  the  Great  Smokies  will  discover 
increasing  air  and  water  pollution  and  land  erosion  as  this  eastern  tip  of 
Appalachia  becomes  the  "second-home"  center  for  developers  like  for- 
mer NATO  commander,  General  Lauris  Norstad.  In  some  mountain 
counties,  more  than  75  percent  of  the  land  is  now  owned  by  resort 
developers  from  outside  the  state.2 

Some  come  as  tourists  and  decide  to  settle.  Whereas  a  postwar  exodus 
sent  Black  farmworkers  and  white  mountain  people  to  the  cities  of  the 
North,  there  has  been  a  more  recent  influx  of  whites  into  the  state, 
looking  to  staff  the  executive  suites  and  research  laboratories  of  the  new 
industries  and  expanded  government  apparatus.  One  such  settler  began 
as  a  news  reporter  for  Raleigh's  paper  of  record,  The  News  and  Observer, 
and  moved  into  state  government  promoting  tourism.  He  likes  North 
Carolina  because  of  the  affection  among  the  people:  "I've  never  seen  a 
place  where  people  are  quite  as  warm  and  friendly."  Another  Northerner, 
David  Flaherty,  who  calls  himself  a  "Boston  Irishman,"  became  the 
state's  Secretary  of  Human  Resources  and  Republican  candidate  for 
governor  in  1976.  Flaherty  came  south  as  a  salesman  for  Broyhill 
Furniture,  settied,  became  a  state  senator  and  now  devotes  himself  to 
Little  League  baseball  and  the  boy  scouts.  "This  is  a  good  environment 
for  bringing  up  kids,"  he  says.  "They  can  get  as  good  an  education  here  as 
anywhere."3  Where  he  sees  salad,  others  see  weeds:  North  Carolina  has 
the  fourth  highest  drop-out  rate  in  the  country,  and  more  juveniles  in 
prison  per  capita  than  any  other  of  these  United  States. 

In  the  North  Carolina  Museum  of  History,  a  block  away  from  the  state 
capitol,  not  one  Black  person  is  identified  in  three  floors  of  exhibitions. 
In  one  corner  hang  three  oil  paintings  of  unidentified  Black  women,  one 
of  whom  is  a  maid,  peacock  fan  in  hand,  standing  over  a  dinner  spread. 
There  are  two  paintings  of  Black  men,  one  a  cook  preparing  a  meal. 

4 


Introduction 

Thirty  photos  alone  are  exhibited  of  David  Marshal  Williams,  the  white 
man  who  designed  the  U.S.  .30m  caliber  carbine.  Nearby  are  a  dozen  oil 
paintings  depicting  "Plantation  Scenes  from  Life"  of  unidentified  Black 
slaves.  Schoolchildren  and  tourists  by  the  busload  troop  through  these 
rooms  each  day  to  receive  "as  good  an  education  as  anywhere." 

Visitors  and  native  Carolinians  drive  on  the  largest  state-maintained 
highway  system  in  the  United  States,  some  75,000  miles  of  roads  which 
have  given  North  Carolina  the  nickname,  "The  Good  Roads  State."  Only 
the  more  curious  will  discover  that  until  1973  the  roads  were  built  and 
maintained  by  convict  labor  in  chain  gangs. 

So  much  camouflage  is  required  to  cover  the  past  of  the  New  South. 
Fayetteville,  the  state's  fastest  growing  community,  is  the  off-base  town 
for  Fort  Bragg,  the  nation's  largest  military  base.  In  the  center  of 
Fayetteville  sits  its  major  tourist  attraction,  the  "Old  Market  House." 
Erected  in  1838,  the  building  is  identified  to  the  thousands  who  annually 
pass  by  as  a  former  town  hall,  former  house  of  worship,  former  bank  and 
former  school.  Left  unmentioned  is  that  it  was  built  and  served  as  the 
largest  slave  auction  block  in  the  state  until  emancipation. 

To  prevent  that  emancipation  from  ever  coming  to  pass,  enlightened 
North  Carolina  furnished  more  men  to  the  Confederate  cause  than  any 
other  state.4  North  Carolina  honors  Confederate  Memorial  Day  on  May 
10  each  year  with  the  official  flying  of  the  Stars  and  Bars.  Known  to 
tourists  and  basketball  fans  as  the  Tarheel  State,  it  took  that  name  from  a 
compliment  by  Robert  E.  Lee  for  the  refusal  of  its  soldiers  to  retreat 
during  the  Battle  of  Gettysburg.  Lee,  commander  of  the  only  army  that 
ever  tried  to  overthrow  the  government  of  the  United  States  by  force  and 
violence,  is  regarded  as  the  most  wonderful  of  heroes  in  this  state  which 
prides  itself  on  vigilence  against  subversion.  Thus  does  the  New  South 
hold  onto  "a  dream  remembered,  a  civilization  gone  with  the  wind,"  as 
Margaret  Mitchell  would  have  had  it. 

It  doesn't  exactly  harken  one  back  to  the  Burma  Shave  days  of  yore, 
but  North  Carolina's  famed  highways  aren't  without  their  Ku  Klux  Klan 
billboards,  urging  drivers  to  "Help  Fight  Communism  and  Integration, 
Join  and  Support  the  United  Klans  of  America,  Inc."  Or,  accompanied 
by  a  picture  of  the  flag,  handbills  declaring:  "Old  Glory.  If  Anybody  tries 
to  tear  it  down,  shoot  him  on  the  spot."  But  most  of  those  in  authority 
deny  the  existence  of  the  Klan  or  consider  it,  at  most,  a  handful  of 
crackpots.  Nightriders  have  become,  if  not  a  relic  of  the  past,  at  least  a 
seldom-used  albeit  effective  method  of  delivering  a  message.  Black 
families  are  occasionally  run  out  of  previously  all-white  neighborhoods 
upon  receiving  a  12-gauge  "salute"  from  hooded  bullies  down  the  block. 

5 


Introduction 


Whatever  one's  guess  of  Klan  influence,  the  cross  burns  bright  in  many 
a  white  Carolinian's  heart.  The  notion  of  evangelical  Christianity  leads  to 
suspicion  of  others  as  "less  than  Christian.'"  One  needn't  travel  far  to  view 
outsiders  as  doing  the  Devil's  work.  In  the  town  of  Oxford  until  recently, 
the  Klan  rallied  its  forces  after  church  services  on  Sunday.  With  God  and 
R.J.  Reynolds  on  their  side,  preachers  in  Winston-Salem  admonish  the 
heathen  and  the  believers  in  the  tobacco  plants  against  joining  trade 
unions.  One  Tarheel  native,  the  Reverend  Billy  Graham,  allows  as  how 
the  "signs  are  now  in  place"  for  the  second  coming  of  Christ.  Among 
those  signs  are  such  things  as  worldwide  rebellion,  greed  and  "problems 
for  which  there  are  no  human  solutions."5 

Many  years  ago  the  Brothers  Grimm  turned  a  scum-laden  toad  into  a 
lovely  prince  for  the  benefit  of  children  the  world  around.  And  more 
recently  the  National  Rifle  Association  has  grown  to  mammoth  propor- 
tions on  the  premise  of  shooting  as  a  form  of  peaceful  recreation.  But 
sorcery  in  the  form  of  public  relations  has  no  equal  to  the  power  structure 
of  North  Carolina.  In  1963,  eight  years  after  the  censure  of  Joseph 
McCarthy  by  the  United  States  Senate,  the  North  Carolina  legislature 
passed  a  bill  banning  from  state-supported  schools  speakers  who  1)  were 
members  of  the  Communist  Party;  2)  advocated  the  overthrow  of  the 
U.S.  Constitution;  or  3)  pleaded  "the  Fifth  Amendment  of  the  Constitu- 
tion in  refusing  to  answer  questions  with  respect  to  Communist  or 
subversive  activities."6This  peculiar  legislation,  which  adroitly  "pro- 
tected" the  Constitution  against  potential  overthrow,  and  simul- 
taneously overthrows  the  Constitution  itself,  perfectly  illustrates  the 
unitarianism  of  the  Old-New  South.  Dr.  Herbert  Aptheker,  a  Commu- 
nist leader  with  a  long  history  of  campus  speaking  engagements,  recalled 
his  experiences  at  the  University  of  North  Carolina  at  Chapel  Hill,  "the 
Harvard  of  the  South"  and  the  single  institution  most  responsible  for  the 
state's  progressive  image.  Aptheker  remembered,  "I  had  spoken  at 
Chapel  Hill  as  early  as  1946  and  1947  as  a  Party  spokesman.  At  the  time 
there  was  no  speakers  ban  but  UNC  was  all  white.  I  argued  that  any  all- 
white  institution  could  not  be  a  university,  that  this  was  a  contradiction 
in  terms.  I  was  waylaid  and  physically  assaulted  for  mere  exercise  of  the 
Constitution.  By  the  time  I  spoke  there  in  1964, 1  was  waylaid  by  the  law. 
Banned  from  speaking  on  the  campus,  I  had  to  speak  onto  it  from  a 
Chapel  Hill  sidewalk."7 

The  First  and  Fifth  Amendments  are  not  the  only  ones  to  experience 
mayhem  at  the  hands  of  North  Carolina  justice.  In  late  1974,  three  high 
school  students  carted  off  two  dozen  bottles  of  soda  without  paying, 
from  a  gas  station  near  Elizabeth  City.  The  students,  all  first  offenders, 

6 


Introduction 

were  sentenced  to  a  five-year  waiver  of  Fourth  Amendment  guarantees 
against  illegal  search  and  seizure.  Under  the  sentence,  their  homes, 
automobiles  and  persons  may  now  be  stopped,  searched,  and  entered 
without  warrants  or  probable  cause  by  any  law  enforcement  officer.  The 
Pasquotank  County  district  attorney  said  that  waivers  of  the  Fourth 
Amendment  are  common  in  that  part  of  the  state.  They  are  used  "to 
encourage  folks  to  walk  the  straight  and  narrow,"  he  said.  In  another 
1974  case,  the  state  Court  of  Appeals  ruled  valid  the  deprivation  of  the 
Fourth  Amendment.8 

Stern  indeed  is  discipline  in  this  bastion  of  progressivism.  A  major 
controversy  developed  in  the  1974  General  Assembly  over  a  bill  to  limit 
spanking  of  students  by  teachers  in  the  schools.  A  compromise  bill  was 
finally  submitted  to  a  House  education  subcommittee  which  called  for 
spanking  "only  as  a  last  resort,"  limited  the  number  of  school  personnel 
allowed  to  spank,  required  a  witness  be  present  during  corporal  punish- 
ment, and  required  record-keeping  of  punishment.  The  bill  never  got  out 
of  committee.  After  public  arguments  favoring  spanking  as  a  method  of 
relieving  tension  and  establishing  good  rapport  with  pupils,  Representa- 
tive Sam  Bundy  of  Pitt  County  pronounced  the  clinching  argument: 
"Teachers  file  enough  reports  already,"  he  said.9 

Recalling  bygone  days  of  posses  and  bounty  hunters,  North  Carolina 
is  the  only  state  in  the  union  that  retains  a  statute  that  deputizes  the 
citizenry  and  allows  officers  to  shoot  a  designated  felon  on  sight.  Enacted 
in  1868,  the  law  tells  the  outlaw  that  any  citizen  "may  slay  him  without 
accusation  or  impeachment  of  any  crime."  Moreover,  a  felony  suspect 
may  be  declared  an  outlaw  before  he  has  been  convicted  if  a  judge  deems 
"convincing"  evidence  of  his  guilt.  Any  judge  or  any  two  justices  of  the 
peace  can  declare  a  suspect  an  outlaw.  While  prison  guards  are  only 
allowed  to  shoot  felons,  not  misdemeanants,  a  misdemeanant  becomes  a 
felon  if  he  tries  to  escape.10  In  "the  goodliest  land  under  the  cope  of 
heaven,"  it  is  estimated  that  at  least  half  t  he  adult  population  maintains  a 
private  collection  of  arms. 

Still,  it  would  be  a  serious  miscalculation  to  believe  that  the  problem  of 
North  Carolina  and  the  New  South  is  a  population  made  up  of  what  H. 
L.  Mencken  sneeringly  described  as  "howling  yokels"  and  "homo  boo- 
biens." 


7 


One 


I  would  invite  those  who  have  criticized  us  to  look  at 
North  Carolina.  Look  at  our  people.  People,  working 
side  by  side  for  common  goals.  Look  in  our  schools, 
look  in  our  factories,  look  at  what's  happening  in  our 
neighborhoods  and  our  communities. 

Governor  James  B.  Hunt,  Jr. 


you  drive  along  Interstate  highway  85  heading  north  from  Dur- 
ham, about  18  miles  out  you  will  pass  a  large  red,  white  and  blue  billboard 
that  reads:  "Welcome  to  Granville  County.  Ku  Klux  Klan  Country.  Help 
Fight  Integration  and  Communism."  The  billboard  pictures  a  white 
knight  atop  a  white  horse.  On  1-95  outside  of  Benson,  another  highway 
sign  announces,  "You  are  Now  Entering  the  Heart  of  Klan  Country. 
Welcome  to  North  Carolina."  Until  1977,  a  similar  billboard  would 
welcome  you  to  Johnston  County,  with  the  added  feature  of  a  border  of 
red  and  white  blinking  lights.  The  Granville  County  Klan  is  not  so 
ostentatious. 

Just  past  its  billboard,  as  you  turn  off  1-85,  you  come  onto  the 
Jefferson  Davis  Highway  which  brings  you  into  Oxford,  seat  of  Gran- 
ville County.  One  of  the  5  counties  in  North  Carolina  with  more  than 
10,000  slaves,  Granville  was  one  of  16  in  the  state  with  majority  Black 
populations  during  the  Reconstruction  years.  Consequently  it  was  one  of 
the  26  Republican  counties.  Today,  only  40  percent  of  the  county  is 
Black;  half  the  county's  families  earn  less  than  $4,000  a  year.  Granville 
has  been  known  for  a  century  for  its  ideal  soil,  which  produces  the  finest 
Bright  leaf  tobacco  in  the  entire  country,  a  reputation  that  caught  the 
notice  of  Buck  Duke,  R.J.  Reynolds  and  the  other  captains  of  the 
industry  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Hence  Oxford  and  nearby  Henderson 
were  the  sites  of  the  first  expansion  of  the  emerging  Carolina  Power  and 
Light  Company  at  the  turn  of  the  century. 

Entering  Oxford  today,  you  first  pass  the  spinning  plants  of  Bur- 
lington Mills,  which  are  said  by  the  townsfolk  to  run  Granville  County. 
Just  past  the  mills  is  the  Welcome  Gas  Station,  a  combination  filling 
station-general  store-gun  shop,  said  to  be  a  local  gathering  place  for 
members  of  the  United  Klans  of  America,  Inc.  Just  north  of  Oxford, 
Robert  G.  Teel,  a  local  Klan  leader,  owned  a  mini-shopping  center  in  a 
Black  community  called  Brown-town.  Here  it  was  that  Teel,  his  son  and 
his  stepson  set  upon  Henry  Lee  Marrow,  a  Black  Vietnam  veteran,  whom 
they  accused  of  insulting  Mr.  Teefs  wife.  After  shooting  Henry  Marrow 

11 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

just  above  the  kneecap,  the  Teel  men  beat  in  Marrow's  skull  as  he  lay 
bleeding  on  the  ground.  Finally  young  Larry  Teel  ended  the  business  by 
blowing  Marrow's  head  off. 

A  block  and  a  half  after  you  pass  the  Welcome  Gas  Station  you  come 
to  Oxford's  town  square  which  contains — as  do  the  town  squares  in  the 
seats  of  most  of  the  state's  100  counties  and  the  state  capital  square — an 
obelisk  with  the  inscribed  dedication,  "To  Our  Confederate  Dead."  A 
few  blocks  north  of  the  obelisk  is  what  appears  to  be  a  small  New 
England  college  campus.  This  is  the  Oxford  Orphanage — officially  the 
White  Orphanage  until  1971— which  raised  white  parentless  children 
from  all  over  the  state  at  the  expense  of  the  Duke  Endowment.  But  if  you 
drive  south  of  the  town  square  and  head  out  beyond  the  Oxford  town 
limits,  you  will  come  to  a  cluster  of  red-brick  buildings  in  need  of  repair, 
standing  in  a  field  of  patchy  grass  and  weeds.  This  is  the  Central 
Orphanage,  formerly  the  Colored  Orphanage,  set  up  separately  and 
unequally,  also  by  the  will  and  with  the  largesse  of  James  B.  Duke. 

For  years,  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Chavis  taught  at  the  Colored  Orphanage. 
Mrs.  Chavis  lives  right  down  the  road  in  a  sprawling  Victorian  house 
which  has  belonged  to  her  family  since  Reconstruction,  as  testified  to  by 
some  two  dozen  gravesites  a  couple  of  hundred  yards  into  the  pine  woods 
in  back.  Mrs.  Chavis  was  born  Elizabeth  Ridley,  her  people  originally 
having  been  brought  as  slaves  from  Africa  via  the  West  Indies  to 
Granville  County.  In  the  backyard  of  the  house  is  a  well,  now  covered 
over,  which,  Mrs.  Chavis  remembers  being  told  as  a  child,  served  as  a 
watering  hole  for  hooded  Knights  of  the  Ku  Klux  Klan,  to  refresh  their 
horses  after  returning  from  Oxford's  Lynch  Hill. 

Elizabeth  Ridley  received  her  education  at  the  all-Black  North  Car- 
olina Central  College  in  Durham  and  became  a  schoolteacher.  Her 
husband  Ben,  a  graduate  of  St.  Augustine  College,  a  Black  Episcopalian 
school  in  Raleigh,  also  taught  school  for  a  while,  although  he  was  a  brick 
mason  by  trade.  Ben  Chavis  was  a  descendent  of  John  Chavis,  said  by 
historian  John  Hope  Franklin  to  be  "the  most  prominent  free  Negro  in 
North  Carolina."  Born  in  Oxford  in  1763,  John  Chavis  was  educated  at 
Princeton  as  a  Latin  and  Greek  scholar.  As  W.E.B.  Du  Bois  wrote,  "In 
1802,  his  freedom  and  character  were  certified  to  and  it  was  declared  that 
he  had  passed  'through  a  regular  course  of  academic  studies'  at  what  is 
now  Washington  and  Lee  University."  John  Chavis  returned  to  North 
Carolina  in  1805,  where  he  became  a  preacher  in  the  Presbyterian  church. 
"His  English  was  remarkably  pure,"  wrote  Du  Bois,  "his  manner  impres- 
sive, his  explanations  clear  and  concise."  His  career  as  a  minister  ended  in 
1832  when,  following  Nat  Turner's  insurrection,  free  Negroes  were 

12 


One 


prohibited  from  preaching.  John  Chavis  turned  then  to  teaching— white 
children  by  day,  Black  children  at  night.  Among  his  former  students  were 
a  U.S.  senator,  two  sons  of  a  Supreme  Court  justice,  and  Charles 
Manley,  later  governor  of  the  state.  Eventually  North  Carolina  passed  a 
law  banning  Blacks  from  teaching,  so  John  Chavis  set  up  an  under- 
ground school  in  the  town  of  Hillsborough,  near  Chapel  Hill. 

After  retiring  from  the  school  system  in  the  early  1960s,  Ben  Chavis 
built  the  Ridley  Drive-In  restaurant  on  the  family  property.  The  town  of 
Oxford  being  shy  of  recreational  facilities  for  Black  folks,  people  came 
from  all  over  to  the  Drive-In  as  a  place  to  hang  out  and  socialize.  In  back 
of  the  Drive-In  and  before  you  come  to  the  graveyard  in  the  woods,  sits 
an  empty  lot  which  serves  as  the  Black  baseball  field  for  Oxford's  young 
people.  Before  he  died  in  1965,  Ben  Chavis  was  the  local  Black  scoutmas- 
ter and  baseball  coach,  his  troops  and  his  teams  using  the  Drive-in  as 
their  center. 

Mrs.  Chavis's  immaculately  furnished  living  room  is  filled  with  pic- 
tures of  her  children,  and  with  relics  of  the  Episcopal  Church  in  which 
they  were  raised.  The  eldest,  June,  converted  to  Catholicism  when  she 
married,  and  moved  to  Charlotte  where  she  too  is  a  schoolteacher. 
Helen,  the  second  daughter,  received  her  PhD.  at  the  University  of 
Wisconsin,  and  now  is  also  in  Charlotte  where  she  chairs  the  Humanities 
Department  at  Johnson  C.  Smith  University.  The  youngest  of  the  Chavis 
children,  Francine,  attended  the  University  of  North  Carolina  at  Greens- 
boro but  was  forced  to  leave  in  the  middle  of  her  senior  year  because  of 
her  involvement  in  civil  rights  activities.  Francine  is  now  studying 
medicine  in  the  German  Democratic  Republic. 

In  the  corner  of  Francine's  old  bedroom  stands  a  shotgun  which, 
before  she  went  abroad  to  study,  she  had  needed  more  than  a  few  times  to 
protect  her  mother  from  Klansmen  who  drove  by  the  house  to  shout 
insults  and  taunts.  For  Mrs.  Chavis  is  also  the  mother  of  Francine's  older 
brother,  the  Reverend  Benjamin  Franklin  Chavis,  Jr.  Growing  up  a  boy 
scout  in  his  father's  troop,  assistant  coach  to  his  father's  baseball  team, 
product  of  Oxford's  "colored"  school  system,  and  lifelong  friend  of  the 
murdered  Henry  Lee  Marrow,  the  Rev.  Chavis  made  the  1972  volume  of 
Outstanding  Young  Men  of  America.  His  biographical  sketch  in  the 
book  tells  us  the  following:  "Born  January  22, 1948.  Education,  Univer- 
sity of  North  Carolina,  B.  A.  1970.  Labor  organizer  AFL-CIO,  1967-68. 
Southern  Christian  Leadership  Conference  organizer,  1968-69.  Com- 
mission for  Racial  Justice,  Director,  United  Church  of  Christ  Commu- 
nity Program,  1970.  First  African  Temple  of  the  Black  Messiah,  founder, 
pastor,  1971.  American  Chemical  Society,  1969.  Granville  County  Demo- 

13 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

cratic  Party  precinct  chairman,  1970.  SCLC  Education  Fund,  board  of 
directors,  1972.  President,  founder,  Black  Student  Union,  1968.  Presi- 
dent, UNC  Student  Union,  1968.  Candidate,  City  Council,  Charlotte, 
N.C.,  1969."  Perhaps  unbeknownst  to  the  compilers  of  Outstanding 
Young  Men  of  America — the  volume  was  Foreworded  by  Richard 
Nixon's  presidential  press  secretary  Ronald  Ziegler — was  that,  at  the 
time  of  publication,  Rev.  Chavis  was  serving  the  first  of  34  years  in  prison 
on  conspiracy  charges  growing  out  of  his  defense,  together  with  nine  co- 
workers, of  a  church  in  the  Black  community  of  Wilmington,  N.C., 
under  a  four-day  armed  siege  by  the  Ku  Klux  Klan  and  other  racist 
fanatics. 

At  the  Oxford  house,  Mrs.  Chavis  stores  every  issue  of  Chemistry 
News  for  her  son  while  he  sits  in  prison.  She  once  told  an  interviewer 
about  Ben,  Jr.  as  a  child,  "My,  yes,  he  was  always  trying  to  put  something 

together." 


In  the  New  Dixie,  old  times  there  are  not  forgotten.  "In  its  grand 
outlines,  the  politics  of  the  South  revolve  around  the  position  of  the 
Negro,"  wrote  Professor  V.O.  Key  back  in  1949.  "The  hard  core  of  the 
political  South — and  the  backbone  of  southern  political  unity — is  made 
up  of  those  counties  and  sections  of  the  Southern  states  in  which  Negroes 
constitute  a  substantial  proportion  of  the  population."  In  these  areas, 
which  make  up  what  was  once  called  "the  Black  Belt"  and  which  include 
the  eastern  third  of  North  Carolina  from  the  Virginia  stateline  to  South 
Carolina,  "The  situation  resembles  fundamentally  that  of  the  Dutch  in 

the  East  Indies  or  the  former  position  of  the  British  in  India  As  in  the 

case  of  the  colonials,  that  white  minority  can  maintain  its  position  only 
with  the  support,  and  by  the  tolerance,  of  those  outside — in  the  home 
country  or  in  the  rest  of  the  United  States."1 

A  quarter-century  after  those  words  were  written  their  essence  remains 
true.  One  cannot  hope  to  understand  the  U  nited  States,  the  South,  North 
Carolina  or  Ben  Chavis,  without  the  knowledge,  firmly  grasped,  that 
Black  people  today  are  descendants  of  slaves,  and  white  people  are  not. 

Even  in  the  course  of  the  colonial  revolution  that  formed  the  United 
States,  that  power  relationship  held.  North  Carolina  historians  still 
proudly  proclaim  that  among  the  13  original  colonies,  theirs  had  more 
loyalists  to  the  Crown  than  any  other.  In  the  course  of  the  revolution 
against  British  rule,  these  loyalists  held  nothing  more  dear  than  the  King, 
with  the  single  exception  of  the  institution  of  chattel  slavery.  In  the 

14 


One 


summer  of  1775,  while  the  colonies  were  in  revolt  against  the  King,  slaves 
in  North  Carolina  were  in  revolt  against  their  bondage.  Hundreds, 
possibly  thousands,  of  slaves  in  Beaufort,  Pitt  and  Craven  counties  were 
executed,  whipped,  branded  or  had  their  ears  cut  off  in  a  wave  of 
repression  against  these  slave  revolts.2  Elsewhere,  some  slaves  were 
allowed  to  join  the  colonial  army  in  exchange  for  which  they  won  their 
freedom. 

As  throughout  the  South,  the  spirit  of  freedom  in  North  Carolina 
expressed  itself  in  numerous  slave  rebellions  in  the  decades  before  and 
following  independence  from  England.  Groups  of  maroons — fugitive 
slaves  engaged  in  guerrilla  warfare  against  the  "peculiar  institution" — 
roamed  through  North  Carolina  in  the  early  nineteenth  century.  In  the 
area  near  Wilmington,  runaway  slaves  gathered  under  the  leadership  of  a 
man  called  the  "General  of  the  Swamps"  at  the  turn  of  the  century. 
Another  Black  fugitive,  Tom  Cooper,  led  bands  in  the  region  of  Eliz- 
abeth City.  In  his  seminal  work,  American  Negro  Slave  Revolts,  histo- 
rian Herbert  Aptheker  estimates  that  in  the  year  1802,  at  least  15  slave 
rebels  were  executed,  scores  arrested  and  tortured  as  a  result  of  reported 
"slave  conspiracies"  in  10  North  Carolina  counties.3  Later  in  1804,  slaves 
rose  up  in  Johnston,  Sampson  and  Wayne  counties,  for  which  some  20 
slaves  were  arrested.  One,  a  woman,  was  burned  alive,  3  or  4  others  were 
hanged,  one  "was  pilloried,  whipped,  his  ears  nailed  down  and  then  cut 
off,"  one  was  banished,  the  others  lashed.4  Maroon  detachments  in 
Onslow,  Carteret  and  Bladen  counties  mounted  a  rebellion  in  1821,  led  by 
a  Black  called  Isam,  "alias  General  Jackson,"  who  was  later  captured  and 
lashed  to  death  in  a  public  execution.5 

In  1829,  David  Walker,  born  the  son  of  a  slave  in  Wilmington,  issued 
his  "Appeal  to  the  Colored  Citizens  of  the  World,"  a  manifesto  for  the 
"total  abolition  of  slavery"  which  became  the  catalyst  for  the  embryonic 
abolitionist  movement.  Published  in  Boston,  the  Appeal  found  its  way 
into  Walker's  home  state.  Copies  were  reported  to  have  been  found  by 
police  in  Fayetteville,  Wilmington,  Chapel  Hill,  New  Bern  and  Hills- 
borough. Spies  were  used  by  the  governor  to  try  to  discover  who  were  its 
distributors,  among  them  the  Reverend  John  Chavis.  In  1830,  the  state 
passed  a  law  to  forbid  the  teaching  of  reading  and  writing  to  slaves.  Laws 
were  passed  requiring  heavy  penalties — death  for  slaves — for  those 
engaged  in  distributing  anti-slavery  materials.  The  state  required  all 
Blacks  emancipated  after  1830  to  leave  North  Carolina  within  90  days.6 

The  state  legislature  convened  secretly  to  develop  methods  of  subdu- 
ing the  growing  disaffection  of  the  Black  population.  In  the  end, 
increased  repression  in  the  form  of  strengthened  militias  was  all  the 

is 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

established  order  was  able  to  come  up  with.  Slaves  suspected  of  insubor- 
dination were  arbitrarily  executed.  The  slaveholders  saw  insurrection 
from  every  quarter.  A  state  judge  rendering  an  opinion  in  1852  demon- 
strated the  siege  mentality:  "What  acts  in  a  slave  towards  a  white  person 
will  amount  to  insolence,  it  is  manifestly  impossible  to  define — it  may 
consist  in  a  look,  the  pointing  of  a  finger,  a  refusal  or  neglect  to  step  out 
of  the  way  when  a  white  person  is  seen  to  approach.  But  each  of  such  acts 
violates  the  rules  of  propriety,  and  if  tolerated,  would  destroy  that 
subordination,  upon  which  our  social  system  rests."7  Clearly,  when  push 
came  to  war  over  whether  to  maintain  or  break  up  the  slave  system, 
North  Carolina  would  be  voted  among  those  most  likely  to  secede. 

When  the  Confederacy  was  defeated  on  the  battlefield,  President 
Andrew  Johnson  of  North  Carolina,  successor  to  the  murdered  Lincoln, 
received  a  petition  from  Blacks  in  his  home  state  who  had  fought 
alongside  the  Union  army.  The  petitioners  prayed  for  "the  privilege  of 
voting"  for  they  who  were  "willing  on  the  field  of  danger  to  carry  the 
Republic's  muskets,  in  the  days  of  Peace  ought  to  be  permitted  to  carry 
its  ballots."8  In  September  1865,  four  months  after  the  petition  was 
submitted,  the  first  freed  men's  convention  in  North  Carolina  met  at 
Raleigh.  About  350,000  Blacks  in  the  state  had  been  freed  by  the 
Thirteenth  Amendment  and,  at  great  personal  risk,  their  120  delegates 
now  came  in  secrecy  under  cover  of  night,  some  receiving  safe-conduct 
papers  from  the  federal  military  authorities.  This  convention  of  former 
slaves  hailed  the  passage  of  the  anti-slavery  amendment  to  the  Constitu- 
tion, the  recognition  of  Liberia  and  Haiti  by  Washington,  and  the 
admission  of  a  Black  attorney  to  the  state  bar.  More,  it  demanded  wages 
for  labor,  free  education  for  the  children,  protection  of  the  family,  and 
the  repeal  of  all  discriminatory  legislation.9 

The  next  year,  the  state  legislature,  in  a  bid  to  be  received  back  into  the 
federal  union,  enacted  a  code  legalizing  Black  marriages  and  safeguard- 
ing the  rights  of  Blacks  in  making  contracts.  Still,  they  were  denied  the 
right  to  vote  or  the  right  to  testify  in  court.  Late  in  the  year,  the  legislature 
voted  overwhelmingly  against  the  Fourteenth  Amendment,  which  would 
grant  Blacks  citizenship  and  deny  public  office  to  anyone  who  had 
supported  the  Confederacy.  Support  of  the  amendment  was  the  congres- 
sional requirement  for  admission  back  into  the  union.  Congress  then 
passed  the  Reconstruction  Acts  over  the  protests  and  veto  of  President 
Johnson.  Southern  state  governments  were  temporarily  suspended, 
pending  the  adoption  of  new  state  constitutions.  Military  law  was 
imposed  to  implement  Reconstruction.  After  the  occupation  of  Raleigh, 
President  Johnson  appointed  William  W.  Holden  as  provisional  gover- 

16 


One 


nor  to  replace  Zebulon  Vance,  who  was  arrested  and  imprisoned  for 
several  weeks.  The  reaction  was  predictable.  Governor  Jonathan  Worth, 
who  defeated  Holden  in  the  subsequent  election,  declared:  "1  abhor  the 
Democratic  tendency  of  our  government.  1  use  the  word  in  its  proper,  not 
its  party,  sense.  The  tendency  is  to  ignore  virtue  and  property  and 
intelligence — and  to  put  the  powers  of  government  into  the  hands  of 
mere  numbers. . .  Men  will  be  governed  by  their  interests.  The  majority  in 
all  times  and  all  countries  are  improvident  and  without  property."10 

The  Republican  Party  was  organized  in  1867  and  chose  Holden  as  its 
gubernatorial  candidate  in  1868.  Running  on  a  platform  of  support  for 
the  Fourteenth  and  Fifteenth  Amendments,  and  for  universal  public 
education,  Holden  won  the  election,  the  first  in  which  the  state  legislature 
was  chosen  on  the  basis  of  population  per  district,  not  wealth. 

With  the  Republican  victory,  the  Ku  Klux  Klan  rose  up  in  1868, 
particularly  in  Alamance  and  Caswell  counties  where  the  Republicans 
showed  increasing  strength.  Called  the  Constitutional  Union  Guard 
(CUG)  in  Lenoir  County,  the  Klan  was  led  by  Jesse  Kennedy,  a  wealthy 
mill  owner  and  by  deputy  sheriff  A.  Munroe.  Among  its  activities  were 
stealing  horses  from  Black  farmers,  preventing  whites  from  working 
alongside  Blacks,  and  assassinating  Republican  leaders,  particularly 
Black  Republicans.  Lynchings  became  commonplace;  ears  were  taken 
from  the  victims  as  proof  of  their  accomplishments.  A  public  barbecue 
was  given  to  celebrate  the  assassination  by  the  CUG  of  Jones  County 
Sheriff  O.R.  Colgrove,  a  Northerner  who  supported  Reconstruction.  In 
Moore  County,  in  which  both  the  sheriff  and  superior  court  clerk  were 
Klan  members,  numerous  houses  and  barns  were  burned  down  to  drive 
out  Black  and  white  Republicans.  One  Black  woman  and  her  five 
children  were  shot  before  their  house  was  set  afire.  One  participant  in  the 
lynching  admitted  to  having  "killed  one  of  the  children  by  kicking  its 
brains  out  with  the  heel  of  his  boot,"  according  to  a  local  news  story.  In 
Alamance  County,  a  Black  man  was  given  150  lashes  and  his  baby  was 
clubbed  to  death.  Black  farmers  were  kidnapped  and  hanged  by  gangs  of 
75  or  100  Klansmen.  County  Sheriff  Albert  Murray,  all  of  his  deputies 
and  Alamance's  representative  in  the  legislature  were  members  of  the 
White  Brotherhood.  Frederick  Strudwick,  an  Orange  County  lawyer,  led 
a  party  of  Klansmen  in  a  plot  to  assassinate  a  Republican  state  senator 
who  had  drafted  a  law  permitting  the  governor  to  proclaim  a  state  of 
insurrection  in  areas  of  Klan  terrorism.  Strudwick  failed  in  the  attempted 
murder,  but  he  was  soon  elected  to  the  legislature  where  he  led  a 
movement  which  repealed  the  act  and  impeached  the  governor  for 
having  used  it. 

17 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

Scores  of  baby-stompings,  castrations,  whippings  and  lynchings  by 
Klansmen  brought  Republican  demands  on  Governor  Holden  to  use  the 
militia  against  the  Klan.  But  most  of  the  victims  were  Black,  and  Holden 
was  reluctant  to  crush  the  counterrevolution.  Hundreds  of  freedmen 
formed  their  own  militia  units.  Still  Klan  terror  ruled  the  day,  as  well  as 
the  sheriffs  departments  and  county  courthouses  where  Klansmen  held 
public  office.  More  people  were  wounded  or  killed  by  Klan  barbarism 
than  on  the  fields  of  Gettysburg  but  the  federal  government  refused  to 
send  troops  to  put  down  the  KKK.  Finally,  Governor  Holden  sent  in 
militia  units  made  up  of  white  mountaineers  and  Blacks.  Hundreds  of 
Klansmen  were  arrested,  only  to  be  freed  by  the  courts.  In  1870,  the 
Democrats  won  a  huge  majority  of  the  legislature,  which  promptly 
impeached  Governor  Holden  for  using  the  militia  against  the  Klan.  He 
thus  became  the  first  state  governor  ever  impeached  in  U.S.  history. 
During  the  impeachment  proceedings,  KKK  activity  reached  its  peak. 
An  elderly  white  man  who  had  given  land  to  his  former  slaves  was 
whipped  and  forced  to  walk  home  five  miles  naked  in  the  cold.  A  white 
couple  who  had  given  an  acre  of  land  for  a  Black  school  were  forced  to 
burn  down  the  building  in  front  of  a  Klan  audience. 

The  Klan  was  hardly  made  up  of  the  stereotyped  poor  white  "red- 
neck." Rather,  the  leaders  of  the  Democratic  Party,  mill  owners,  leading 
lawyers  and  elected  officials,  and  the  law  enforcement  authorities  com- 
prised its  central  core  and  its  leadership.  Every  newspaper  in  the  state 
save  two  supported  the  wave  of  terror.  With  the  ascendency  to  power  by 
the  Democrats,  there  was  no  longer  a  need  for  the  Klan  and  it  faded  in 
importance. 1 1  The  state  machinery  itself  could  now  be  used  to  protect  the 
established  order.  On  a  national  level,  the  Republican  Rutherford  B. 
Hayes  was  elected  president  in  1876  on  a  promise  to  the  South  of  the 
withdrawal  of  federal  troops.  Northern  industry,  in  full  support  of 
Hayes,  began  its  movement  south.  Reconstruction  was  destroyed,  wage 
slavery  replaced  chattel  slavery,  prison  labor  replaced  slave  labor,  jim 
crow  law  replaced  vigilante  law. 

By  1900  the  poll  tax  and  "grandfather  clause"  were  in  effect.  To  legalize 
the  violent  overthrow  of  Reconstruction,  the  authorities  disenfranchised 
Black  voters.  The  grandfather  clause,  a  key  ingredient  in  this  witches 
brew  of  conspiracy,  prevented  anyone  from  voting  whose  grandfather 
had  not,  thereby  keeping  the  state  safe  from  democracy.  Faced  with  the 
terror  of  the  state  apparatus,  not  one  of  the  18  majority-Black  counties  in 
North  Carolina  defeated  the  disenfranchisement  amendment  to  the  state 
constitution.  In  New  Hanover  County,  which  embraces  Wilmington, 
with  its  50.8  percent  Black  majority,  only  two  votes  were  registered 

18 


One 


against  disenfranchisement.12  The  new  industrial  ruling  class,  in  com- 
mand of  the  Democratic  Party,  was  now  firmly  in  control  of  the  state. 

Moreover,  the  Klan's  glorification  of  white  supremacy  increased  its 
hold  on  the  minds  of  whites  throughout  the  United  States.  In  1905,  a 
North  Carolinian,  Thomas  Dixon,  published  a  romantic  novel,  The 
Clansman,  which  became  a  runaway  best-seller.  Ten  years  later,  D.W. 
Griffith  turned  the  book  into  the  most  popular  movie  of  its  time,  The 
Birth  of  a  Nation.  Heady  with  the  success  of  the  movie,  the  Klan  rose 
again  as  a  national  phenomenon,  extending  its  catalogue  of  hatreds  to 
include  Jews,  Catholics,  labor  unions,  immigrant  workers  and  radicals. 
As  Klan  membership  reached  a  peak  of  as  many  as  eight  million,13 
President  Woodrow  Wilson  wrote  to  a  church  editor  that  segregation 
was  "distinctly  to  the  advantage  of  the  colored  people  themselves."14 

Halfway  into  the  twentieth  century,  a  petition  charging  the  United 
States  with  genocide  against  Black  people,  bearing  the  names  of  dozens 
of  leaders  of  civil  and  human  rights  movements,  was  submitted  to  the 
United  Nations  in  Paris  and  in  New  York  by  William  L.  Patterson  and 
Paul  Robeson.  Documenting  hundreds  of  lynchings  of  Blacks 
throughout  the  United  States  and  especially  in  the  South,  the  roster  of 
mayhem  in  North  Carolina  read  like  that  which  defeated  Reconstruction 
50  years  earlier.  In  the  late  1940s,  for  example,  Willie  Pittman,  a  taxi 
driver,  was  found  mutilated  near  Rocky  Mount.  His  legs  and  arms  had 
been  cut  off,  his  body  split  open,  his  head  smashed.  In  Lillington,  Charles 
Smith  was  killed  by  two  whites  who  also  shot  and  wounded  five  other 
Black  people.  A  jury  freed  the  murderers  after  27  minutes  of  deliberation. 
Otis  Newsom,  a  25-year-old  war  veteran  from  Wilson  and  father  of  three 
children,  was  shot  and  killed  for  no  apparent  reason  by  a  white  gas 
station  operator.  A  North  Carolina  A  and  T  student  died  an  hour  after 
being  refused  admittance  to  Duke  Hospital  in  Durham  following  an  auto  \ 
accident.  Another  veteran  was  shot  dead  near  Bailey  by  a  posse  of  two 
dozen  men  who  swooped  down  on  him  in  eight  cars.  He  had  been  waiting 
for  a  bus.  Still  another  Black  vet,  Paul  Dorsey,  was  assaulted  in 
Waynesville  by  4  whites  who  ordered  him  off  a  bus  and  into  their 
automobile.  A  lynch  mob  of  400  persons  planned  to  murder  Dorsey, 
until  the  police  intervened.  Dorsey  was  arrested  however  while  the 
potential  lynchers  went  free.15 

The  years  of  these  attacks  against  Black  veterans  of  World  War  Two 
were  the  years  of  Ben  Chavis's  early  childhood.  Twenty  years  later,  a 
friend  of  that  childhood,  Henry  Lee  Marrow,  a  veteran  of  Vietnam, 
returned  home  to  Oxford.  A  few  months  later  he  too  was  murdered  by 
local  merchants,  members  of  the  Klan.  Ben  Chavis  had  by  now  passed 

19 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

through  his  formative  years  and  decided  he  must  make  his  ideals  a  reality 
rather  than  simply  upholding  them.  More  than  merely  refrain  from  evil, 
he  had  determined  that  it  was  more  honorable  to  fight  it. 


B  en  had  started  putting  things  together  at  a  very  early  age,  by  sneaking 
in  to  listen  to  adult  conversations  about  one  or  another  incident  involv- 
ing a  white  man  doing  a  Black  man  wrong  in  Oxford.  "The  term  'Black,'" 
he  now  recalls,  "was  a  bad  word.  I  felt  I  was  a  colored  person.  And 
properly  known  as  a  Negro."  When  the  family  or  friends  would  talk 
about  the  National  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Colored  People 
(NAACP)  they  would  lower  their  voices  to  a  whisper  because  it  was 
known  as  a  subversive  organization.  Many  of  them  held  NAACP 
membership  cards  but  nobody  dared  to  carry  them  in  their  wallets. 

Ben  was  six  years  old  when  the  U.S.  Supreme  Court  ruled  in  1954,  in 
X  Brown  v.  Board  of  Education,  that  school  segregation  was  illegal.  But  the 
law  of  the  land  wasn't  applied  in  North  Carolina,  let  alone  Oxford,  until 
after  he'd  graduated  high  school.  So  he  was  raised  on  separate  libraries,  a 
new  brick  building  for  whites,  a  small  wooden  shack  for  Blacks;  on 
sitting  in  the  balcony  and  paying  more  for  movies;  on  water  fountains 
painted  white  or  black;  on  not  being  allowed  to  sit  at  eating  counters  even 
when  there  were  empty  seats. 

Oxford  contained  one  slum  area  called  the  Stronghold,  where  Black 
people  were  forced  to  live  in  old  school  buses.  Young  Ben  couldn't 
understand  why  some  kids  had  to  live  in  old  buses  while  he  and  others 
could  go  home  to  their  houses.  He  learned  that  the  Stronghold  folks  were 
mainly  mill  laborers  and  tobacco  farmers.  Mornings,  he  would  watch  the 
wagons  heading  out  to  the  tobacco  fields,  working  the  plantations  for 
rich  white  owners.  They  were  bound  to  the  fields  by  indebtedness.  Year 
after  year  they  would  have  to  work  the  fields  if  they  expected  credit  at  the 
grocery  store,  if  they  expected  to  meet  their  medical  bills.  Many  of  Ben's 
schoolmates  lived  in  shanties,  trapped  as  "tenants"  on  these  farms.  They 
couldn't  come  to  school  until  the  late  Fall,  after  tobacco  season.  Then 
they'd  have  to  leave  school  in  mid-Spring  to  go  to  the  fields  again. 
Eventually  they  missed  too  much  school  to  continue. 

Ben  went  to  school  his  first  years  at  the  Colored  Orphanage  because  it 
was  more  convenient  for  Mrs.  Chavis,  who  taught  there.  Those  like  Ben 
who  had  homes  to  go  to  after  school  called  themselves  "outside  kids," 
and  the  orphans  "inside  kids."  Many  of  the  orphans  didn't  have  shoes, 
and  Ben  went  to  school  barefooted  so  as  not  to  accent  the  difference. 


20 


One 


One  of  his  earliest  memories  is  of  riding  to  Henderson,  just  a  few  miles 
from  Oxford,  with  his  father  and  his  sister  June's  husband,  Marvin 
Davenport.  Ben  was  sitting  in  the  back  seat,  looking  out  the  window,  and 
he  could  see  men  with  rifles  and  olive-green  uniforms  of  the  National 
Guard.  The  Harriet-Henderson  Cotton  Mill  strike  was  on  and  little  Ben 
saw  his  first  picket  line.  Broken  glass  covered  the  streets,  the  result  of 
violence  brought  on  by  the  company's  importing  of  scab  labor  to  break 
the  strike.  Ben  can't  remember  his  dad's  exact  conversation  with  Marvin, 
but  recalls  their  sympathy  with  the  workers,  both  Black  and  white. 

In  her  autobiography,  Cnelia,  Cornelia  Wallace,  former  wife  of 
Governor  George,  offers  an  apologia  for  segregation  as  "a  way  of  life": 
"Once  the  change  began  to  be  forced,  the  relations  between  Blacks  and 
whites  became  strained  and  uneasy."  But  growing  up  in  strictly  segre- 
gated Oxford,  for  Ben  Chavis  Black-white  relations  were  "strained  and 
uneasy"  as  they'd  ever  been  or  ever  would  be.  One  night  during  his  tenth- 
grade  year  at  the  all-Black  Mary  Potter  High  School,  Ben  left  the  school 
Softball  field  to  go  to  the  corner  store  for  a  soda-pop.  The  store  was 
attached  to  a  service  station  and,  as  Ben  was  getting  his  bottle  out  of  the 
machine,  a  carload  of  white  men  pulled  into  the  station.  Before  he  knew 
what  was  happening,  the  men  jumped  out  of  the  car  and  were  upon  him, 
beating  him  bloody. 

When  the  men  left,  Ben  ran  back  to  the  softball  game  to  tell  his  friends 
what  happened.  They  all  grabbed  baseball  bats,  sticks  or  whatever 
makeshift  weapons  they  could  find  and  headed  for  the  Three  Way 
Restaurant,  the  white  hoodlums'  hangout  across  the  street  from  the 
White  Orphanage.  Ben  had  maybe  30  friends  with  him  as  they  ap- 
proached the  Three  Way,  but  of  course  they  were  now  in  hostile  territory, 
outside  their  own  turf.  Before  they  were  able  to  find  the  men  who  had 
beaten  him,  the  police  were  called  in  and  Ben  was  brought  down  to  the 
station  with  his  father,  to  tell  the  tale  of  the  beating.  The  assailants  were 
described  and  identified,  but  the  police  would  not  let  Mr.  Chavis  swear 
out  an  arrest  warrant.  "One  thing  I'll  never  forget,"  says  Ben,  now  grown. 
"What  hurt  me  more  than  the  beating  was  the  expression  on  my  father's 
face  when  he  realized  that  the  police  weren't  going  to  do  anything.  I  think 
my  father  still  believed  that  the  system  would  bring  about  some  justice. 
That's  why  he  came  to  the  police  station  and  gave  this  long  statement, 
real  detailed,  for  about  an  hour."  When  Mr.  Chavis  and  Ben  returned 
home,  Mrs.  Chavis  was  being  treated  for  a  mild  heart  attack,  brought  on 
by  alarmist  rumors  about  Ben  being  badly  stabbed  during  the  beating. 

From  that  time  on,  Ben  started  to  notice  things  more.  Little  things,  like 
driving  into  a  gas  station  with  his  father,  the  teenage  attendant  calling 
Mr.  Chavis  "boy,"  the  middle-aged  attendant  calling  his  father  "uncle." 

21 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

As  his  rage  built,  Ben  decided  to  act  on  it.  The  new  all-white  Thorton 
Library  had  just  been  built.  Black  kids  used  to  just  walk  past  the  library. 
There  wasn't  any  sign  saying  "whites  only,"  but  it  was  understood  by  the 
Black  community  that  they  weren't  supposed  to  go  there.  Ben's  position 
was,  "I  ain't  seen  no  sign  saying  it  was  all  white.  County  building,  I  was 
going  in  there.  So  I  persuaded  some  dudes  to  go  with  me.  1  went  up  and 
said,  'I  want  a  library  card,  I'm  a  student  here,  I  pay  taxes  for  this 
building,  I  want  a  card.'  Sort  of  shocked  the  little  old  white  lady  behind 
the  desk.  She  tried  to  put  me  off  but  I  said  I  wasn't  going  nowhere  until  I 
got  a  library  card."  The  woman  called  the  head  librarian  and  he  gave  Ben 
a  card.  Just  like  that.  The  next  day,  more  Black  students,  15  or  so,  went  in 
and  got  library  cards.  The  library  was  desegregated  from  then  on.  A  week 
later  Ben  and  his  friends  took  on  the  local  moviehouse  in  like  fashion. 
Threatened  with  arrest  when  they  sat  in  the  white  section,  they  ignored 
the  threat  and  nothing  ever  happened.  Except  that  never  again  was  the 
theatre  to  have  all-white  seating  arrangements. 

One  day  Ben  and  Mrs.  Chavis  were  downtown  in  the  Williams 
Drugstore  for  a  refreshment  after  completing  their  shopping.  Mrs. 
Chavis  had  bought  graduation  presents  for  some  of  the  students  at  the 
orphanage.  Her  presents  were  stacked  in  a  pile  while  they  awaited 
service,  but  the  waitress,  instead  of  serving  them,  was  scolding  a  young 
Black  boy  for  sitting  down  at  the  counter.  As  Ben  recalls,  "This  was 
about  the  first  time  I  saw  my  mother  get  really  angry.  She  just  threw  the 
packages  down  on  the  floor  and  said  she  wasn't  going  to  buy  anything  in 
a  racist  drugstore  like  this.  I  just  said,  right  on." 

But  the  Chavises  were  hardly  militant.  Ben  knew  of  course  that  Martin 
Luther  King,  Jr.  and  Malcolm  X  existed,  because  Ebony  reported  their 
activities.  But  there  were  no  organizations  in  Oxford  to  join.  The 
Congress  of  Racial  Equality  (CORE)  was  active  elsewhere,  but  even  so  it 
was  not  a  membership  organization.  N  AACP  meetings  were  held  mainly 
for  the  purpose  of  raising  money  to  pay  bond  for  people  who  had  been 
arrested,  or  for  their  lawyers'  fees.  The  Student  Non-Violent  Coordinat- 
ing Committee  (SNCC)  was  unheard  of  until  much  later,  although  it  had 
been  founded  on  the  Shaw  University  campus  in  Raleigh  in  1960.  The 
only  time  Ben  ever  heard  of  Dr.  King  or  CORE  was  when  the  radio 
reported  some  violent  outburst  against  the  sit-in  movement. 

But  things  changed  in  1963  when  Ben  got  his  driver's  license.  He  now 
had  some  mobility,  some  contact  with  things  outside  of  Oxford.  He 
would  hear  of  demonstrations  through  a  grapevine  of  telephone  contacts 
in  other  cities,  and  would  drive  to  them  in  his  parents'  car  although  they 
were  never  told  his  destination.  When  word  came  of  a  demonstration  in 


22 


One 

Greensboro,  a  rally  in  Durham,  a  picketline  in  Raleigh,  Ben  would  try  to 
get  there. 

In  1964,  the  state  legislature  passed  the  Communist  speakers'  ban, 
barring  from  state  campuses  any  member  of  the  Communist  Party  or 
anyone  who  had  used  the  Fifth  Amendment  to  the  U.S.  Constitution  for 
protection  against  self-incrimination  before  head-hunting  congressional 
committees.  McCarthyism  was  frozen  into  time  and  color  in  North 
Carolina,  like  a  stained-glass  window.  A  decade  after  speakers'  bans  were 
imposed  in  other  states,  and  years  after  they  had  already  been  lifted 
elsewhere,  the  burghers  of  Raleigh  sought  to  outlaw  anything  more 
controversial  than  opposition  to  muscular  dystrophy.  About  this  time, 
Dr.  Herbert  Aptheker,  a  noted  historian  on  the  pre-  and  post-Civil  War 
period  and  a  Communist  Party  leader,  had  gained  a  reputation  as  a 
campus  lecturer,  a  determined  challenger  to  all  such  proscriptions 
against  his  right  to  speak.  Now  Aptheker  was  invited  to  Chapel  Hill,  but 
because  of  the  ban,  was  forced  to  address  the  student  body  through  a 
bull-horn  from  across  the  street  from  the  school.  Duke  University,  a 
private  institution,  fell  outside  the  jurisdiction  of  the  speakers'  ban,  so  he 
was  able  to  speak  on  that  campus.  By  now  Ben  was  caught  up  in  the 
controversy.  He  and  a  group  of  friends  went  to  hear  the  Communist  who 
was  defying  the  ban.  Cars  came  from  all  over  the  state,  as  did  the  highway 
patrol  and  local  cops  who  circled  the  campus  at  the  bidding  of  a  state 
government  which  was  clearly  at  sea  with  concerns  of  the  intellect.  Ben 
was  about  to  graduate  from  high  school  and  his  intellectual  thirst  was 
being  quenched. 

A  decision  on  college  had  to  be  made.  Ben's  frequent  trips  to  the  state 
capitol  city  of  Raleigh  acquainted  him  with  St.  Augustine's  College,  the 
all-Black  Episcopal  school  of  his  father  and  his  sisters  June  and  Helen. 
Upon  graduation  from  high  school,  he  knew,  this  was  where  he'd  come  to 
study.  From  the  beginning  however,  things  were  wrong  for  Ben  at  "St. 
Aug's."  A  month  after  school  started  that  Fall  of  1965,  Ben  Chavis,  Sr. 
died.  Young  Ben's  emotional  state  was  fragile.  He  was  angry  with  himself 
for  not  spending  more  time  with  his  father,  always  postponing  to  a  later 
date  the  talks  he  wanted  with  the  old  man.  It  had  been  a  long  time  since 
his  father  was  scoutmaster  to  Ben's  pack  of  boy  scouts. 

Ben's  response  was  to  throw  himself  into  his  studies.  A  chemistry 
major,  he  made  the  dean's  list  in  his  freshman  year  and  was  elected 
president  of  his  sophomore  class  for  the  following  autumn.  But  he  felt 
confined  by  the  self-containment  and  the  strictures  of  homogeneity  of  a 
small,  private  school.  He  withdrew  from  St.  Augustine's  and  headed  for 
Charlotte,  the  largest  city  in  North  Carolina,  where  his  sister  June  was 
now  living. 


23 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

It  was  too  late  in  the  semester  to  enroll  at  another  school.  So  his  first 
months  in  Charlotte  were  for  Ben  a  series  of  temporary  and  part-time 
jobs — laboratory  technician  in  a  chemical  plant,  stockman  and  salesman 
in  a  shoestore,  dishwasher  and  short-order  cook  in  a  diner.  He  knew  he 
was  biding  his  time,  gathering  his  energies  and  his  will,  preparing  for  his 
entrance  to  school  at  the  University  of  North  Carolina  at  Charlotte 
(UNCC),  one  of  the  first  Black  enrollees  and  the  first  in  chemistry. 

Ben  had  never  in  his  18  years  sat  in  class  with  a  white  student  before 
UNCC.  He  knew  he  would  be  alone,  on  the  fringe  of  campus  life.  Of 
several  thousand  students,  only  eight  were  Black,  four  of  those  part-time, 
the  others  freshmen  except  Ben.  They  were  curiosities.  The  white  stu- 
dents stared  at  Ben  and  he  would  stare  at  them.  But  because  of  his  studies 
at  St.  Augustine's  and  reading  he  had  done  on  his  own,  he  did  well  in  the 
lab  and  the  classroom.  The  white  students  were  surprised  and  began  to 
approach  Ben  to  join  their  study  groups. 

If  he  took  the  campus  by  surprise,  the  campus  returned  the  favor  to 
Ben.  The  Vietnam  War  had  stirred  students  across  the  country  as  they 
had  never  been  moved  before  and,  if  St.  Augustine's  was  an  exception, 
UNCC  was  not.  Ben's  first  day  on  campus  set  the  pattern  for  his  days  at 
the  university.  Leaflets  were  being  distributed  announcing  an  anti-war 
meeting  that  evening  and  he  decided  to  go.  A  new  organization,  the 
Southern  Students  Organizing  Committee,  based  in  Tennessee,  had  just 
sent  a  representative  to  Hanoi.  Lynn  Wells  had  brought  back  with  her  a 
film  of  the  Democratic  Republic  of  Vietnam  and  was  now  making  a 
Southern  campus  tour.  The  university  would  not  let  her  speak  without 
sponsorship  of  a  campus  organization  and  no  existing  group  would 
sponsor  her.  So  a  new  group  emerged,  Students  for  Action,  for  the 
purpose  of  inviting  Lynn  Wells  to  UNCC.  Ben  Chavis  was  chosen  vice- 
president  of  Students  for  Action.  If  Fidel  Castro  had  come  to  Charlotte, 
a  greater  commotion  would  not  have  erupted.  Never  had  a  peace 
symposium  been  held  in  the  Queen  City.  Students  from  all  the  area 
colleges  and  the  television  newspeople  came  to  hear  this  audacious 
display  of  sentiment  against  the  Vietnam  terror.  Also  making  their 
presence  felt  were  State  Bureau  of  Investigation  dicks  and  the  men  of  the 
Charlotte  police  department's  Red  Squad,  under  the  direction  of  Lt.  A. 
T.  Europa.  This  was  Ben's  introduction  to  the  "intelligence  community," 
the  beginning  of  a  not  so  beautiful  relationship.  In  a  matter  of  days, 
sleepy  Charlotte  awoke  to  find  its  main  university  campus  radicalized. 
Students  for  Action  decided  to  affiliate  with  the  Southern  Students 
Organizing  Committee  and  Ben  soon  became  president  of  the  UNCC 
chapter. 

24 


One 

While  he  was  becoming  active  at  UNCC,  Ben  made  the  acquaintance 
of  some  students  at  Charlotte's  all-Black  Johnson  C.  Smith  University. 
Among  these  were  T.  J.  Reddy,  one  of  the  South's  best  young  poets,  and 
Charles  Parker,  a  high  school  honor  student,  band  musician  and  basket- 
ball player.  T.J.  and  CP.  were  eventually  to  follow  Ben  to  UNCC  the 
next  year  where  they  would  join  Students  for  Action.  But  this  October  of 
1967,  T.J.  and  three  others,  including  Vicky  Minar,  a  white  VISTA 
worker  who  would  soon  become  T. J. 's  wife,  went  horseback  riding  at  the 
Lazy  B  Stables  on  the  perimeter  of  Charlotte.  Jim  Crow  was  still  the  rule 
in  North  Carolina's  private  recreation  centers  and  the  stable  manager 
refused  to  let  the  Black  students  mount  his  horses.  That  night,  word  of 
the  incident  got  to  Students  for  Action,  which  immediately  called  a 
meeting  to  determine  what  action  to  take.  Picket  signs  were  constructed, 
magic-markers  applied  to  slogans,  and  transportation  arranged  to  the 
stable  for  the  next  day.  When  T.J.,  Vicky,  CP.  and  Ben  returned  to  the 
Lazy  B  with  Students  for  Action,  the  stable  manager  called  in  the  police. 
But  the  picket  demonstration  continued.  After  the  news  media  arrived, 
cameras  and  all,  the  manager  relented  and  allowed  CP.  to  ride  for  the 
photographers.  Students  for  Action  could  claim  another  victory;  the 
Lazy  B  was  desegregated  and  the  whole  city  saw  it  on  TV  or  in  the 
Observer  or  the  News. 

On  campus  Ben  pursued  public  office.  While  heading  up  Students  for 
Action,  he  ran  for  student  union  president  and  won  by  14  votes.  In  his 
new  post  he  planned  all  the  lecture  series  and  social  activities  to  accom- 
pany the  intellectual  bread  of  the  classroom.  For  the  first  time  Black 
entertainers  like  Little  Anthony  and  the  Imperials  and  the  Impressions 
performed  at  UNCC.  The  school's  lecture  committee  invited  Barry 
Goldwater  to  speak  that  Spring  and  it  was  Ben's  responsibility  to  host  the 
Air  Force  general  and  junior  senator  from  Arizona.  As  president  of  the 
student  union,  Ben  felt  responsible  to  his  appointed  task  and  introduced 
Goldwater  to  his  audience,  welcomed  him  to  UNCC,  hoped  his  stay 
would  be  pleasant.  A  school  reception  in  honor  of  the  invited  speaker 
followed  at  the  Charlotte  Country  Club,  as  segregated  then  and  today  as 
its  counterpart  in  Capetown.  Ben  Chavis,  student  union  president,  was 
not  invited. 

In  Charlotte's  Black  community,  the  state's  largest,  folks  were  con- 
sciously against  the  war  because  of  the  high  draft  rate  and  the  subsequent 
high  casualty  rate.  Charlotte  Citizens  for  Peace  (CCP)  was  organized 
and  marched  on  the  local  draft  board.  Through  the  CCP,  Ben  met  Dr. 
James  Earl  Grant,  a  chemistry  professor  out  of  Penn  State  University, 
now  a  VISTA  volunteer  and  draft  counselor  for  the  American  Friends 


25 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

Service  Committee  in  Charlotte.  Jim  Grant  convinced  Ben  of  the  need  to 
counsel  Black  teenagers  on  how  to  avoid  the  draft.  Whites  knew  how  to 
avoid  the  draft  but  Blacks  did  not.  They  lacked  information,  didn't  know 
they  could  challenge  the  draft  boards,  were  unaware  of  the  possibility  of 
obtaining  conscientious-objector  status. 

Meantime,  Gene  McCarthy  and  Bobby  Kennedy  were  running  for 
President  as  peace  candidates  that  Winter  and  Spring  of  1967-68,  trying 
to  win  the  Democratic  nomination  from  Hubert  Humphrey,  vice-presi- 
dent and  circuit  rider  in  defense  of  the  discredited  war  policies  of 
President  Lyndon  Johnson.  With  characteristic  abandon,  Ben  threw 
himself  into  the  Democratic  Party  in  Charlotte.  But  whereas  most  Young 
Democrats  were  stumping  for  McCarthy,  Ben  supported  Bobby.  "Most 
white  people  in  Charlotte  hated  the  Kennedys,"  Ben  now  recalls.  "I 
remember  when  President  Kennedy  was  killed,  whites  in  Oxford  and 
Raleigh  actually  held  parties  to  celebrate  his  death.  In  retrospect  1  know 
better  but  at  the  time  I  figured  that  if  the  racists  harbored  such  hostility 
for  Jack  and  Bobby,  they  must  be  doing  something  right." 

There  was  of  course  to  be  more  to  celebrate  in  the  klaverns  of  the  Klan 
that  Spring,  as  assassins  ended  the  lives  of  Rev.  Martin  Luther  King,  Jr. 
and  Bobby  Kennedy.  Students  for  Action,  under  Ben's  leadership,  held 
memorial  services  for  Dr.  King.  Ben  addressed  the  service  and  cried 
throughout  his  remarks,  but  with  the  passing  of  the  non-violent  apostle 
there  were  to  be  no  more  tears  shed  by  Ben  Chavis.  Not  for  a  long  while. 
As  Black  communities  rose  up  in  Washington,  D.C.  and  Chicago  and 
Detroit  and  a  dozen  other  cities,  so  they  rose  in  Wilmington,  North 
Carolina.  The  National  Guard  was  sent  in  and  dropped  tear  gas  on  all  the 
housing  projects  in  the  port  city.  Ben  and  some  Students  for  Action 
headed  for  Wilmington  but  were  denied  entrance  to  the  city  by  a  highway 
patrol  blockade.  Every  outlet  of  expression  from  electoral  campaigning 
to  public  demonstrations  were  thus  closed  to  Ben  and  his  friends  during 
that  eventful  spring  of  their  political  coming  of  age. 

During  Ben's  junior  year,  more  Black  students,  perhaps  25,  entered 
UNCC.  When  they  all  joined  Students  for  Action,  Ben  organized  a  Black 
caucus  within  the  organization.  And  while  Students  for  Action  and  its 
Black  caucus  developed  on  campus  by  day,  Ben  and  Jim  Grant  moved  at 
night  to  organize  the  Black  Cultural  Association  (BCA)  in  Charlotte. 
They  found  a  house  at  the  corner  of  Oaklawn  Street  and  Statesville 
Avenue,  and  the  Black  Cultural  Association  moved  in.  The  house  was 
painted  black,  and  a  mural  created  on  the  walls  with  portraits  of 
Malcolm  X,  Frederick  Douglass  and  W.E.B.  Du  Bois. 

The  police  could  not  abide  the  appearance  of  the  Black  House,  and  a 

26 


One 


round-the-clock  stakeout  was  imposed.  The  Black  Cultural  Association 
organized  rent  strikes,  boycotts  of  price-gouging  white  merchants  in  the 
community,  pickets  of  the  housing  authority,  demonstrations  at  the 
school  board  for  Black  studies  programs.  What  started  with  about  20 
young  Black  activists  grew  in  the  summer  months  into  a  movement  that 
attracted  up  to  3,000  citizens  to  its  public  meetings.  The  attraction  of  the 
Black  community  to  the  Black  Cultural  Association  did  not  go  unnoticed 
by  the  city  and  state  police.  As  public  support  grew  for  the  association,  so 
did  the  dossiers  on  Ben  Chavis  and  Jim  Grant.  Jim  was  relieved  of  his 
VISTA  job  but  retained  by  the  American  Friends  Service  Committee. 

The  appearance  of  Ben's  and  Jim's  activist  leadership  on  the  campuses 
and  Black  communities  of  Charlotte  did  not  sit  easily  with  the  white  men 
who  controlled  that  center  of  the  Southern  textile  industry,  and  the 
second  city  of  the  nation's  trucking  industry.  For  the  men  who  ran  Duke 
Power  and  the  Wachovia  Bank,  the  license-plate  logo  "First  in  Freedom" 
was  demonstration  enough  of  the  good  intentions  of  the  New  Southern 
ruling  class.  Chavis  and  Grant  had  other  notions.  They  believed,  with 
Archibald  Macleish,  who  wrote  in  1949,  that,  "Revolution,  which  was 
once  a  word  spoken  with  pride  by  every  American  who  had  the  right  to 
claim  it,  has  become  a  word  spoken  with  timidity  and  doubt  and  even 
loathing.  And  freedom  which,  in  the  old  days,  was  something  you  used 
has  now  become  something  you  save — something  you  put  away  and 
protect  like  your  other  possessions — like  a  deed  or  a  bond  in  a  bank.  The 
true  test  of  freedom  is  in  its  use.  It  has  no  other  test." 

In  those  days,  the  Charlotte  police  department  was  still  nearly  all- 
white,  and  any  movement  in  the  Black  community  smacked  of  outright 
challenge  to  their  notion  of  "lawnorder,"  Richard  Nixon's  presidential 
campaign  credo  which  was  gaining  currency  in  the  suburbs  like  beer  at  a 
fraternity  party.  One  night  the  police  arrested  two  Black  Cultural 
Association  members,  took  them  downtown,  placed  pistols  at  their 
temples  and  demanded  they  confess  to  a  bombing  if  they  didn't  want 
their  brains  drying  on  the  wall  the  next  morning.  When  the  BCA  was 
finally  able  to  release  the  two  men,  Ben  organized  a  press  conference  to 
let  them  tell  their  story  to  the  city.  Even  the  press  was  critical  of  the  police 
action,  which  did  little  to  further  endear  the  BCA  to  Charlotte's  finest. 

That  summer,  a  Black  Vietnam  veteran  named  Theodore  Alfred  Hood 
joined  the  BCA.  Al  Hood  was  the  first  BCA  member  that  didn't  live  in 
the  Greenville  area  of  Charlotte.  Because  he  was  from  Griertown, 
another  Black  community  about  10  miles  from  Greenville,  Hood  was 
unknown  to  the  BCA  leaders.  They  were  to  discover  later  that  he  had  a 
criminal  record  which  included  convictions  for  auto  theft,  assault  with  a 

27 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

deadly  weapon  with  intent  to  kill,  carrying  a  concealed  weapon  and 
assault  on  a  police  officer,  not  precisely  qualifications  for  admission  to 
the  Society  of  Friends.  But  he  was  Black,  seemingly  dedicated  to  building 
the  BCA  and  was  given  permission  to  start  a  Griertown  chapter.  Among 
Hood's  proteges  was  Walter  David  Washington,  who  had  recently  been 
discharged  from  the  Marine  Corps  for  being  a  dangerous  schizophrenic. 
Washington's  career  after  the  service  was  more  checkered  than  a  ging- 
ham blouse:  charged  with  larceny,  damage  to  property,  assault,  assault 
with  a  deadly  weapon,  and  breaking  and  entering.  Their  admission  to  the 
BCA  coincided  with  the  appearance  of  an  apparent  schism  in  the  group. 

While  Ben  worked  in  the  association  as  an  extracurricular  activity,  he 
pursued  his  degree  at  UNCC.  Through  the  Students  for  Action,  he 
arranged  an  invitation  to  Stokely  Carmichael,  chairman  of  the  Student 
Non-Violent  Coordinating  Committee.  The  Atlanta-based  SNCC  was 
then  merging  with  the  neophyte  Black  Panther  Party  of  Oakland, 
California.  Like  thousands  of  Black  students  on  campuses  throughout 
the  country,  Ben  was  taken  with  Stokely  Carmichael  and  his  rhetoric  of 
revolutionary  nationalism.  SNCC-BPP  was  a  leading  influence  in  de- 
veloping Black  student  unions  at  many  universities,  and  with  Car- 
michael's  appearance  at  UNCC,  the  Black  caucus  of  Students  for  Action 
decided  to  become  the  Black  Student  Union,  with  Ben  as  its  president. 
There  being  no  Black  faculty  members  at  the  university,  the  BSU  asked 
Dr.  Jim  Grant  to  become  its  "faculty  advisor." 

There  were  now  some  50  Black  students  at  UNCC  and  they  were 
determined  to  have  a  Black  studies  program  as  part  of  the  academic 
curriculum.  The  university  refused  to  acknowledge  the  demand  and  the 
BSU  turned  to  demonstrations,  marching  on  the  administration  building 
to  register  its  protests.  As  the  demonstrators  approached  the  building, 
one  of  the  Black  service  workers  inside  came  out  to  tell  the  BSU  that  the 
building  was  evacuated,  that  police  with  billies  were  waiting  for  them  to 
come  inside.  Accompanying  the  BSU  were  students  from  Johnson  C. 
Smith  and  Livingston  College,  who  looked  to  Ben  and  his  comrades  for 
leadership.  Avoiding  the  police  trap,  they  gathered  outside  the  building 
to  listen  to  T.J.  Reddy  read  his  poetry.  Eventually  the  administration 
agreed  to  discuss  the  BSU  demands,  but  the  first  negotiating  session  was 
held  up  for  an  hour  and  a  half  when  the  administration  refused  to  allow 
Jim  Grant  in  on  the  discussion.  But  that  refusal,  it  was  pointed  out, 
would  result  in  the  breakdown  of  the  negotiations  and  consequently 
renewed  demonstrations  with  their  implied  potential  for  violent  police 
retaliation.  The  university  retreated,  agreed  to  establish  a  Black  studies 
program  and  a  compensatory  recruitment  program  for  more  Black 

28 


One 


students.  Ben  was  beginning  to  learn  something  of  the  power  of  the  state 
apparatus,  and  of  the  counterveiiing  power  of  mass  action. 

His  activities  at  UNCC  were  having  a  felt  effect  in  surrounding 
counties.  At  Belmont  Abbey  College  outside  of  Gastonia,  Black  students 
began  to  organize  an  Afro-American  Culture  Association.  Belmont  is  a 
typical  Piedmont  mill  town,  barren  of  culture  or  recreation,  where 
Klansmen  got  their  entertainment  and  exercise  by  chasing  Black  children 
coming  from  school.  Belmont  Abbey  had  all  of  10  Black  men  students,  to 
complement  the  50  Black  women  students  at  Sacred  Heart  College 
across  the  street.  Together  they  seized  the  chemistry  building  and 
demanded  an  end  to  racism  in  the  schools  and  the  establishment  of  Black 
history  courses.  They  held  the  building  for  a  day  with  the  support  of  some 
sympathetic  white  students  from  the  North.  When  the  local  Klan  sent  to 
Gastonia  for  reinforcements  and  for  heavy  artillery  to  make  a  military 
assault  on  the  building,  the  students  called  Charlotte  for  help  from  the 
Black  Panther  Organization.  Ben  and  Jim  organized  community  support 
for  the  Belmont-Abbey  students. 

Ben  continued  to  feel  a  special  affinity  for  the  Black  community  at  large 
and  worked  to  eliminate  the  artificial  separation  of  town  and  gown  for 
Blacks.  He  and  Jim  built  reputations  for  themselves  as  community 
organizers,  sort  of  an  Avon  calling  for  Black  radicalism. 

The  Panther  organization  in  Charlotte  had  been  formed  partly  in 
response  to  Carmichaers  visit,  and  partly  due  to  the  disintegration  of  the 
Black  Cultural  Association.  The  BCA's  demise  came  after  the  city  police 
stepped  up  their  harassment  of  the  group.  The  Black  House  remained 
under  constant  surveillance,  thus  intimidating  the  neighbors,  and  a 
narcotics  trade  began  to  develop  inside  the  BCA.  That  the  dope  turned 
up  about  the  same  time  as  Al  Hood  and  David  Washington,  who  were 
known  as  dealers  for  the  local  syndicate,  may  well  have  been  more  than 
coincidental.  In  any  case  this  led  to  further  busts,  then  pacification  and 
ultimately  dissolution  of  the  BCA.  The  more  politically  minded  BCA 
members,  Ben  among  them  but  not  Jim  Grant,  moved  to  form  the 
Panther  organization.  They  insisted  on  calling  themselves  the  Black 
Panther  Organization,  so  as  to  distinguish  it  as  independent  of  the  Black 
Panther  Party  of  Huey  Newton  and  Stokely  Carmichael.  The  Charlotte 
group  subscribed  to  the  "10-point  program"  of  the  BPP  and  distributed 
the  weekly  Panther  newspaper  published  in  Oakland,  California,  but 
remained  organizationally  independent.  But  as  the  "revolutionary  na- 
tionalists" of  the  BCA  became  Panthers,  the  "cultural  nationalists" 
under  Al  Hood  set  up  a  rival  organization  called  US,  taking  its  name 
from  the  California-based  organization  led  by  Ron  Karenga,  with 

29 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 


headquarters  in  Los  Angeles.  (According  to  the  testimony  of  police  agent 
Louis  Tackwood — The  Glass  House  Tapes,  Avon,  New  York,  1973 — 
and  secret  FBI  memos — New  York  Post,  January  5,  1976 — the  FBI  and 
the  Criminal  Conspiracy  Section  of  the  Los  Angeles  Police  Department 
helped  set  up  US,  whose  gunmen  killed  four  Panthers  in  Los  Angeles  and 
San  Diego  alone.) 

Complementing  the  Black  Panther  Organization  in  Charlotte  was  the 
Black  Political  Organization,  an  electoral  expression  of  the  aspirations 
of  Black  townspeople.  The  Reverend  George  Leak  was  running  for 
mayor,  the  first  time  a  Black  person  had  run  for  public  office  in  Charlotte 
in  this  century.16  Although  the  city's  population  is  almost  one-third 
Black,  the  Board  of  Elections  reported  that  whites  outnumbered  Blacks 
five  to  one  at  the  polls.  The  BPO,  announcing  a  platform  calling  for  strict 
enforcement  of  the  housing  code  and  resident  control  of  public  housing, 
projected  a  slate  of  candidates,  Leak  for  mayor  and  seven  city  council 
aspirants.  Ben  was  selected  to  be  one  of  the  latter,  as  were  three  Black 
women.  Racism  hung  over  Charlotte  like  a  net.  Changing  white  attitudes 
seemed  as  easy  as  changing  the  ocean.  Rev.  Leak  came  under  serious 
attack.  Threats  were  telephoned  to  his  home  and  to  those  of  his  running 
mates.  Things,  they  were  told,  would  get  worse  before  they  got  worse. 
The  Black  community  reacted.  Their  candidates  needed  protection.  The 
"more  respectable  folks"  rented  a  U-Haul  van  and  summoned  the 
Panthers  to  station  themselves  in  the  van  outside  Rev.  Leak's  home.  Not 
much  later,  the  Black  Panther  Organization  was  patrolling  all  the  streets 
of  the  community. 


Ihe  old  placebo  that  anyone  can  grow  up  to  be  president  has  unfor- 
tunately been  proven  several  times.  But  Tarheel  politics  make  a  fetish  of 
the  proposition. 

Joseph  Branch,  for  example,  has  been  a  justice  on  the  North  Carolina 
Supreme  Court  since  1966.  Before  that  he  was  campaign  manager  and 
then  general  counsel  to  Governor  Dan  K.  Moore.  Governor  Moore  also 
sits  now  on  the  Supreme  Court.  Two  elections  before,  Judge  Branch 
worked  as  general  counsel  to  Governor  Luther  Hodges.  In  the  1960 
gubernatorial  election,  Judge  Branch  campaigned  for  attorney  I.  Beverly 
Lake  against  Terry  Sanford.  Lake's  campaign  was  managed  by  Robert 
Morgan,  now  junior  U.S.  senator.  Morgan,  like  Branch,  was  a  student  of 
Lake  at  Wake  Forest  College.  Lake  was  defeated  by  Sanford  but  ran 
again  in  1964  against  Moore.  When  Moore  won  and  became  governor,  he 


30 


One 


appointed  Lake  to  the  Supreme  Court,  together  with  Branch.  Moore's 
successor,  Governor  Bob  Scott,  whose  father  was  also  governor  and 
senator,  appointed  Moore  to  the  Supreme  Court. 

This  Good-Old-Boy  Network — Branch,  Moore,  Hodges,  Lake,  San- 
ford,  Morgan  and  Scott — is  entirely  Democrat.  Except  for  Lake  and 
Morgan,  all  were  considered  "middle-of-the-road,"  according  to  Branch. 
Judge  Lake,  Branch  says,  "holds  that  the  middle  of  the  road  is  the  best 
place  to  get  run  over."17  Actually,  all  governors  and  major  North 
Carolina  politicians  in  this  century — until  1972 — have  been  Democrats. 
The  pattern  was  set  in  1898  when  the  Democrats  and  their  paramilitary 
wing,  the  Redshirts,  overthrew  the  Republicans  by  force  and  violence 
because  of  Reconstruction.  Not  until  1972,  during  the  Nixon  sweep  of 
George  McGovern,  was  another  Republican  elected  governor.  Dan  K. 
Moore  credits  Luther  Hodges  for  the  rise  of  modern  Republicanism. 
Although  a  staunch  Democrat,  Governor  Hodges  led  the  drive  to  bring 
Northern  industry  to  the  state  and  with  it  came  Republican  corporation 
executives. 

Hodges,  the  son  of  a  tenant  farmer,  went  to  work  for  Marshall  Field, 
rose  to  become  a  vice-president,  ran  the  company's  textile  division,  and 
after  the  second  world  war  headed  up  the  Marshall  Plan  in  Germany.  In 
1952  he  was  elected  lieutenant  governor  and  became  governor  upon  the 
death  in  office  of  William  Umstead.  After  being  elected  again  in  1956  and 
serving  a  full  term — North  Carolina  law  limited  the  governorship  to  one 
four-year  term — Hodges  was  named  secretary  of  commerce  in  President 
Kennedy's  cabinet.  Next  to  the  modern  industrialization  of  North 
Carolina,  the  Hodges  years  in  the  statehouse  were  most  notable  for  the 
massive  resistence  to  U.S.  Supreme  Court  school  desegregation  rulings. 
Hodges  was  considered  a  moderate — comedian  Dick  Gregory  once 
described  the  Southern  moderate  as  one  who  lynches  from  a  low  tree —  ] 
by  virtue  of  comparison  with  the  blatant  racist  rhetoric  of  his  assistant 
attorney  general,  I.  Beverly  Lake,  who  carried  the  state's  legal  burdens  in 
the  courts.  Lake  was  accompanied  in  this  task  on  the  legislative  level  by 
his  protege,  then  state  Senator  Robert  Morgan. 

With  Hodges'  term  coming  to  an  end  in  1960,  Lake  started  campaign- 
ing early  for  the  governor's  mansion.  Under  the  management  of  Morgan, 
the  "conservative"  appeal  left  nothing  to  the  imagination.  Lake's  cam- 
paign literature  quoted  from  his  argument  before  the  U.S.  Supreme 
Court:  "Race  consciousness  is  not  race  hatred.  It  is  not  intolerance.  It  is  a 
deeply  ingrained  awareness  of  a  birthright  held  in  trust  for  posterity."  He 
declared  "unthinkable"  North  Carolina's  "surrender  to  the  NAACP." 
Over  statewide  television  he  argued  that  the  NAACP's  "ultimate  objec- 

31 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

tive  is  the  blending  of  the  white  and  Negro  races  into  a  mixed-blooded 
whole."  Before  a  Lion's  Club  meeting  in  Ashboro  he  warned,  "The 
mixture  of  our  two  great  races  in  the  classroom  and  then  in  the  home  is 
not  inevitable  and  is  not  to  be  tolerated."18 

Lake  was  defeated  by  Terry  Sanford  in  that  race,  but  he  tried  again  in 
1964.  The  Democratic  primary,  which  had  always  determined  the  general 
election  winner,  was  crowded  with  five  candidates.  Lake  came  in  third 
this  time,  but  a  runoff  was  necessary  to  decide  between  the  frontrunners, 
the  "moderate"  Richardson  Preyer  and  the  "conservative"  Dan  K. 
Moore.  Moore,  a  Champion  Paper  Company  executive  with  a  person- 
ality as  bland  as  dentist-chair  music,  was  the  beneficiary  of  Lake's 
largesse.  Full-page  ads  in  the  state's  major  dailies  carried  the  text  of  a 
Lake  television  speech  endorsing  Moore:  "Whom  do  you  see  standing 
there  ready  to  advise  and  direct  [Preyer's]  administration?  .  .  .  Kelly 
Alexander,  head  of  the  NAACP  in  North  Carolina,  all  of  those  block 
voters  who  are  captive  pawns  in  the  hands  of  Bobby  Kennedy  and  Martin 
Luther  King;  last  and  least  there  is  that  small  but  noisy  clique  of 
professional  liberals  at  Chapel  Hill  who  are  a  red  and  festering  sore  upon 
the  body  of  a  great  university."19  (Emphasis  added.  The  Communist 
speakers'  ban  was  then  in  effect  and  was  a  major  campaign  issue  of  the 
Lake  group.)  Candidate  Moore  seconded  supporter  Lake's  remarks: 
"My  opponent . . .  owes  his  lead  and  owes  a  large  part  of  his  entire  vote  to 
the  block  Negro  vote  in  North  Carolina."  (Lake  was  appointed  to  the 
state  supreme  court  by  Moore  in  1965  and  remains  on  the  bench  today. 
His  views  have  not  mellowed  with  time.  In  1969  he  denied  his  papers  to 
East  Carolina  University  because,  "I  do  not  care  to  have  anything 
belonging  to  me  in  the  custody  of  an  institution  that  finds  it  necessary  to 
apologize  for  displaying  the  Confederate  flag  and  singing  Dixie."  The 
News  and  Observer,  April  10,  1969.) 

The  Black  population  in  the  state  was  only  20  percent  of  the  whole,  and 
the  federal  voting  rights  bill  was  not  yet  in  effect  at  that  time.  No  matter, 
race  is  politics  in  North  Carolina.  It  always  has  been.  For  decades,  the 
white-supremacy  campaigns  waged  by  the  Democratic  Party  for  the 
legislature  and  the  governorship  were,  of  course,  successful.  Back  in 
1898,  accompanied  by  violent  terrorism  of  the  Redshirts  and  the  Klan, 
the  campaign  had  been  fought  on  a  pledge  to  remove  Black  people  from 
politics.  In  1900,  Charles  Brantley  Aycock  was  elected  governor.  The 
legislature  disenfranchised  Blacks  on  the  grounds  of  illiteracy  and 
instituted  the  grandfather  clause  to  accommodate  illiterate  whites.20 
Aycock,  a  "moderate"  of  his  time,  argued  for  "colored  education." 
Writing  in  1904,  he  said,  "When  the  [suffrage]  fight  had  been  won,  I  felt 

32 


One 


that  the  time  had  come  when  the  negro  [sic]  should  be  taught  to  realize 
that  while  he  would  not  be  permitted  to  govern  the  state,  his  rights  should 
be  held  more  sacred  by  reason  of  his  weakness."21 

The  march  of  time  did  nothing  to  moderate  race-baiting  as  an  inherent 
part  of  those  quadrennial  rites  of  passage  known  as  elections.  It  drove 
from  politics  Frank  Porter  Graham,  North  Carolina's  most  noted 
progressive  spokeman  of  this  century.  Graham  was  a  history  professor  at 
Chapel  Hill  in  1930  when  he  was  named  president  of  the  university.  Says 
former  Governor  Terry  Sanford,  now  president  of  Duke  University  in 
Durham:  "Frank  Graham's  spirit  moved  this  state.  He  and  UNC  explain 
why  North  Carolina  has  a  reputation  for  progressivism." 

An  early  supporter  of  the  Spanish  Republic  and  the  Committee  for  the 
Protection  of  the  Foreign  Born,  Graham  also  became  a  leader  of  the 
Southern  Conference  on  Human  Rights  which  led  the  struggle  for  the 
rights  of  sharecroppers,  tenant  farmers  and  migrant  laborers.  In  the  days 
when  the  words  "labor  organizer"  and  "bolshevik"  were  synonymous,  he 
argued  for  abolition  of  the  twelve-hour  day  and  for  workmen's  compen- 
sation. 

For  all  that,  Frank  Graham  was  hardly  a  radical.  But  in  the  valley  of 
blind  reaction,  the  one-eyed  liberal  is  considered  dangerous.  Dr.  Graham 
maintained  the  university  as  an  all-white  institution  because  it  was  "the 
law"  and,  as  he  would  say  upon  retirement,  "We  obeyed  the  law."22  In 
1949,  he  was  appointed  to  fill  a  U.S.  Senate  seat  left  vacant  by  the  death 
of  J.  Melville  Broughton.  The  next  year,  Graham  had  to  face  the  voters 
of  North  Carolina  for  the  first  time  in  his  life.  He  survived  the  primary 
and  came  within  a  percent  of  the  needed  majority.  But  one  month  later  he 
lost  the  run-off  by  18,000  votes.  Jonathan  Daniels,  editor  of  The  News 
and  Observer  and  a  personal  friend  of  Graham,  described  the  opposition 
campaign  strategy:  "In  the  first  primary  we  hit  him  with  the  Communists 
and  the  people  wouldn't  take  it.  Now,  we're  gonna  hit  him  with  the 

n  r."23  Red-baiting  and  race-baiting  proved  to  be  the  campaign's 

equivalent  of  assault  and  battery. 

Two  days  before  the  elections,  when  newspaper  subscribers  unrolled 
their  papers  they  found  handbills  headlined,  "WHITE  PEOPLE  WAKE 
UP!"  The  flyers  asked  if  voters  wanted  "Negroes  using  your  toilet 
facilities?"  "Negroes  working  beside  you?"  the  seemingly  compulsory 
"Negroes  going  to  white  schools  and  white  children  going  to  Negro 
schools?"  etc.  The  leaflets  asked  for  votes  for  Willis  Smith,  claiming  "He 
will  uphold  the  traditions  of  the  South."  (Smith  was  a  former  president  of 
the  American  Bar  Association.)  Photographs  were  passed  out  at  filling 
stations  where  white  farmers  gathered  to  talk;  they  pictured  Black  GIs 

33 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

dancing  with  white  women  in  British  nightclubs.  Hate  calls  and  threats 
were  phoned  into  election  officials  favorable  to  Graham.  The  shift  of 
votes  away  from  Graham  between  the  primary  and  the  run-off  was  most 
crucial  among  the  "well-educated,  well-to-do  middle  class,"  according  to 
one  study.  Especially  damaging  "was  the  insistent  drumming  of  the  fear 
that  white  and  Negro  children  might  have  to  attend  the  same  schools." 
Samuel  Lubell,  who  conducted  the  study,  wrote,  "Frank  Graham  was 
defeated  not  by  a  foul-mouthed  Theodore  Bilbo  [a  U.S.  senator  from 
Mississippi,  remembered  only  for  his  cretinous  bigotry.  Author]  but  by  a 
nationally  honored  lawyer,  who  was  chairman  of  the  board  of  trustees  of 
Duke  University.  It  was  not  only  the  bigots  who  turned  against  'Dr. 
Frank'  but  many  'progressive'  North  Carolinians."24 

The  progressive  legacy  of  Frank  Graham  has  since  been  used  as  public 
relations  foam  on  the  mug  of  beery  conservatism  that  is  North  Carolina 
politics.  For  a  time,  Governor  Terry  Sanford  perpetuated  the  state's  New 
South  image  outside  of  North  Carolina.  Ironically,  it  was  just  this 
concern  with  matters  outside  the  state  that  brought  an  end  to  Sanford's 
political  career.  Now  president  of  Duke  University,  he  was  roundly 
defeated  by  Tarheel  Democrats  in  the  1972  presidential  primary.  Emerg- 
ing as  the  people's  choice  was  George  Wallace.  Seventy-five  percent  of 
the  state's  voters  are  Democrat,  yet  Wallace,  running  as  an  independent, 
placed  second  in  the  1968  presidential  election,  outdistanced  by  Richard 
Nixon  but  beating  out  the  Democrat  Hubert  Humphrey. 

The  mood  of  the  electorate  in  that  1968  vote  was  consistent  as  it 
returned  Sam  J.  Ervin,  Jr.  to  the  U.S.  Senate  for  a  third  term.  Ervin,  the 
state's  most  popular  politician  at  the  time,25  epitomized  the  New  South- 
ern identity  of  North  Carolina  in  the  minds  of  his  fellow  countrymen 
during  the  Nixon  years  in  the  White  House.  Adjudicator  of  Watergate 
evils,  a  walking  Bartlett's  of  familiar  quotations  from  Bard  and  Bible, 
Ervin,  whose  appearance  has  been  likened  to  a  windbag  Senator 
Claghorn,  was  made  into  something  of  a  folk  hero  in  the  manner  that  is 
accomplished  in  these  contemporary  times:  A  record  of  Senator  Sam 
proverbs  was  produced,  campus  speaking  tours  arranged,  Sam  Ervin  T- 
shirts  manufactured. 

A  true  representative  of  the  established  order  in  his  home  state,  Ervin's 
libertarian  image  belied  his  nineteenth  century  politics.  "Like  most 
southerners,"  wrote  his  unofficial  biographer,  "Ervin  believed  in  the 
separate-but-equal  doctrine  set  forth  in  the  year  of  his  birth. ...  He  was 
convinced  that  segregation  was  the  natural  result  of  people  freely 
associating  with  members  of  their  own  race."26  Ervin  first  entered  the 
Senate  in  1954  just  weeks  after  the  Supreme  Court  ruling  to  desegregate 

34 


One 

the  schools.  While  his  fellow  Democrats  Luther  Hodges  and  I.  Beverly 
Lake  did  battle  on  the  home  front,  Ervin  joined  the  fray  in  Washington. 
Together  with  Richard  Russell  of  Georgia  and  John  Stennis  of  Mississip- 
pi, Ervin  wrote  the  "Southern  Manifesto"  in  1956,  a  blood  oath  encour- 
aging states  to  resist  the  law  of  the  land.  Syndicated  columnist  Tom 
Wicker,  himself  a  North  Carolinian,  chides  the  man  who  came  to  be 
known  as  the  Senate's  foremost  defender  of  the  Constitution:  "He  did 
not  find  anything  in  the  Constitution  about  a  Black  man's  right  to  eat  a 
toasted-cheese  sandwich  or  a  Moon  Pie  at  a  dime-store  lunch  counter, 
and  he  did  not  even  see  any  language  that  expanded  to  fit  the  case."27 

Ervin  employed  all  his  country-lawyer  folksiness  in  the  Senate  in 
behalf  of  his  favorite  causes:  against  the  1964  Civil  Rights  Act,  the  1965 
Voting  Rights  Act,  the  1966  Mine  Safety  Act.  He  led  the  filibuster  against 
the  repeal  of  the  law  preventing  closed  union  shops  and  became  a  favorite 
speaker  of  the  National  Association  of  Manufacturers.  Ervin  received  a 
perfect  rating  of  100  from  the  American  Security  Council,  a  collection  of 
retired  Pentagon  brass  and  munitions  industry  executives,  for  his  votes 
favoring  the  space  shuttle,  military  aid  to  the  Greek  junta,  the  Trident 
submarine,  B-l  supersonic  bomber  and  C-5A  transport  plane,  and 
continuation  of  the  draft.  Ervin  in  turn  called  the  Joint  Chiefs  of  Staff  a 
group  of  "fine  Christian  gentlemen"  and  declared  his  unwavering  sup- 
port of  the  Vietnam  War  by  explaining,  "If  we  pull  out,  Old  Glory  will  be 
turned  into  a  white  flag." 

Welfare  for  the  Pentagon  was  scarcely  matched  by  a  concern  for  the 
powerless.  Ervin  opposed  the  Equal  Rights  Amendment  for  women,  day 
care  for  children,  highway  funds  for  mass  transit,  a  Fair  Employment 
Practices  Commission  for  North  Carolina,  federal  relief  for  nutrition  ~f 
and  health  care  in  his  own  home  state,  legal  services  for  the  poor,  ^e 
unemployment  compensation  for  migrant  workers,  medicare  for  the 
sick,  and  the  Occupational  Health  and  Safety  Act  to  protect  55  million 
production  workers  on  the  job.  In  1971,  Ervin  co-sponsored  legislation  to 
prohibit  food  stamps  to  families  engaged  in  labor  strikes.28 

Senator  Sam  also  led  the  opposition  in  the  Senate  in  defeating 
ratification  of  the  United  Nations  Convention  against  genocide.  An 
outgrowth  of  the  Nazi  slaughter  of  European  Jews,  the  convention  has 
been  subscribed  to  by  78  countries  over  the  last  quarter-century.  North 
Carolina's  senior  senator  helped  assure  that  at  least  while  he  was  in 
office,  the  United  States  would  not  officially  stand  against  genocide.29 

In  his  classic  study,  Southern  Politics,  V.O.  Key  found  that  those 
North  Carolina  counties  that  had  had  the  fewest  slaves  came  out  of  the 
Civil  War  with  the  strongest  Republican  leanings.  Most  of  these  were 

35 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

located  in  the  Blue  Ridge,  "the  great  spine  of  Republicanism  which  runs 
down  the  back  of  the  South."  When  Key  made  his  findings  in  1944,  81 
percent  of  the  state's  Republican  votes  came  from  those  western  count- 
ies. Three  decades  later,  the  pattern  hasn't  changed  much.  The  first 
Republican  governor  in  this  century,  James  Holshouser,  who  served 
from  1972  to  1976,  comes  from  the  mountain  town  of  Boone. 

Not  that  the  party  label  makes  a  difference.  James  E.  Broyhill,  for 
more  than  20  years  Republican  national  committeeman  and  a  member  of 
the  national  Republican  finance  committee,  was,  not  incidentally,  owner 
of  Broyhill  Furniture,  one  of  the  nation's  giant  wood  furniture  manufac- 
turers. North  Carolina  is  the  leading  furniture  producer  in  the  United 
States  and  Broyhill's  Lenoir  is  one  of  the  state's  main  manufacturing 
centers.  A  former  director  of  the  National  Association  of  Manufacturers, 
and  a  personal  friend  of  such  Republican  leaders  as  Herbert  Hoover, 
Robert  Taft,  Dwight  Eisenhower  and  Richard  Nixon,  Broyhill  was,  to 
use  Nixonian  lingo,  the  Big  Enchilada  of  North  Carolina  Republican- 
ism.30 One  of  Broyhill's  son's,  James  T.,  has  been  a  Republican  congress- 
man since  1962.  A  son-in-law  and  vice-president  of  Broyhill  Furniture, 
William  Stevens,  was  the  GOP  opponent  in  the  1974  U.S.  Senate  race 
against  Robert  Morgan. 

Republican  U.S.  Senator  Jesse  Helms,  who  hails  from  the  eastern  part 
of  the  state,  was  a  Democrat  until  1970.  For  years  the  editorial  voice  of 
Raleigh's  ABC  television  affiliate,  Helms  describes  himself  as  "the 
sorriest  politician  that  ever  came  down  the  pike."  But  in  1972  he  benefited 
from  the  Nixon  sweep  and  claims  to  have  received  more  than  90  percent 
of  the  George  Wallace  vote  as  well.  Indeed,  gas  stations  and  diners 
throughout  rural  North  Carolina  still  feature  Wallace  wall  posters  and 
"Give  'em  Helms,  Jesse"  bumper  stickers  alongside  one  another. 

The  only  way  Helms  could  have  won,  in  fact,  was  to  obtain  even  more 
Democratic  votes  than  Republican,  which  led  him  to  conclude  that  his 
and  the  country's  future  lay  in  a  realignment  of  parties  and  the  creation  of 
a  third,  ultra-right  party.  In  February  1974  he  was  chosen  chairman  of 
the  Committee  on  Conservative  Alternatives  to  study  the  possibilities  of 
building  such  a  party.31  A  collection  of  reactionary  politicians  who  feel 
that  the  Democrats  and  Republicans  are  moving  too  fast  and  too  far  to 
the  left,  the  committee  believes  that  what  America  needs  more  than  a 
good  five-cents  cigar  is  an  outspokenly  right-wing  political  center.  In 
1976,  when  Ronald  Reagan  declared  himself  for  the  presidency,  Helms 
gave  up  his  third-party  notions  for  the  time  being  to  chair  Reagan's 
primary  campaign  in  North  Carolina.  That  primary  gave  Reagan  his  first 
victory  over  Gerald  Ford  and  paved  the  way  for  him  to  the  Republican 

36 


One 

convention.  (Such  were  the  politics  of  the  1976  primaries  that  Henry 
Jackson,  surely  the  Democratic  candidate  furthest  to  the  right,  save 
George  Wallace,  was  forced  to  pull  out  of  North  Carolina  two  weeks 
before  the  election  when  his  campaign  manager  and  half  the  campaign 
staff  dropped  Jackson  for  stating  opposition  to  Section  14b  of  the  Taft- 
Hartley  Act,  which  allows  states  to  enact  "right-to-work"  laws.  The 
Greensboro  Daily  News  pointed  out  to  Jackson  that  in  North  Carolina^ 
Section  14b  "is  cherished  rather  like  one  of  the  crown  jewels.") 

Helms  has  been  likened  to  South  Carolina's  Strom  Thurmond,  who 
led  a  Dixiecrat  third-party  effort  in  1948  and  eventually  left  the  Demo- 
crats for  the  Republicans.  Like  Thurmond,  Helms  is  full  of  country 
bromides:  "Prayer  is,  after  all,  a  Constitutional  right  and  a  moral  duty"; 
"We  must  reverse  the  trend  that  says  that  women  must  be  liberated  from 
the  dignity  of  motherhood  and  from  the  femininity  of  her  natural 
development,"  etc.32 

During  the  Watergate  scandal,  and  the  movement  to  impeach  Richard 
Nixon,  Helms  rose  to  the  defense  of  his  president.  Claiming  that  the 
disgraced  Nixon  was  falling  victim  to  "the  major  media,"  Helms  said 
the  press  "serves  the  same  function  in  today's  naked  power  struggle  as  the 
manipulated  mobs  of  the  past  brought  pressure  for  the  removal  of 
kings."33  Many  are  the  sows'  ears  made  silken  by  the  prose  of  Jesse 
Helms.  H  is  concern  for  and  praise  of  kings  made  for  a  natural  bond  with 
the  Czar-gazing  exiled  writer  Alexander  Solzhenitsyn,  whom  Helms 
befriended  and  sponsored  in  the  Senate  for  honorary  U.S.  citizenship.  In 
1974,  Helms'  concern  for  freedom  throughout  the  world  brought  him  to 
Taiwan  to  address  the  annual  Freedom  Day  Rally  at  the  invitation  of  the 
late  Generalissimo  Chiang  Kai-shek.  A  like  speaking  engagement  was 
fulfilled  in  Santiago  de  Chile  at  the  bidding  of  General  Pinochet. 

That  the  Democrat  Senator  Robert  Morgan — who  rose  to  power  as  a 
segregationist  state  legislator  and  as  the  attorney  general  who  led  the 
persecution  of  the  Wilmington  10— and  the  Republican  Senator  Helms 
are  simultaneously  visited  upon  the  people  of  North  Carolina  capsulizes 
the  myth  of  this  state  as  in  the  van  of  a  progressive  New  South.  The 
General  Assembly  building  in  Raleigh  may  be  the  only  thing  modern 
about  Tarheel  politics.  In  the  legislature  there  are  no  roll  calls  in  * 
committees,  no  fiscal  control  of  government,  no  ethics  legislation,  no  I 
conflict-of-interest  legislation.  Ralph  Nader's  Citizen's  Conference  on 
State  Legislatures  rated  North  Carolina's  47th  in  the  country  on  the  basis  $ 
of  functioning,  accountability,  representation  and  handling  of  informa-  £ 
tion. 


37 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

In  1971  the  average  state  legislature  spent  two  dollars  per  constituent; 
North  Carolina's  spent  twelve  cents,  perhaps  the  most  obvious  indication 
of  its  domination  by  what  have  come  to  be  known  euphemistically  as 
special  interests.  Raleigh's  News  and  Observer  editor  Claude  Sitton 
spells  out  those  interests:  "The  banks,  power  companies,  real  estate, 
trucking,  developers,  textile  interests;  but  mainly  the  banks."34  The 
General  Assembly  meets  only  two  months  of  the  year  and  North 
Carolina  is  the  only  state  in  the  union  in  which  the  governor  has  no  power 
of  veto.  Clearly  the  politicians  are  only  in  the  basement  of  the  power 
structure. 

That  race  is  still  the  political  issue,  no  matter  how  masqueraded, 
speaks  volumes  about  the  nature  of  that  structure.  In  1974,  Alabama  had 
15  Black  representatives  in  its  state  legislature,  13  in  the  House  and  2  in 
the  Senate.  That  year,  South  Carolina  voters  elected  9  Black  state 
legislators;  in  Georgia,  the  number  of  seats  held  by  Black  representatives 
went  from  16  to  22.  North  Carolina  had  3  out  of  a  total  170  members  of 
the  General  Assembly. 

Until  the  early  1960s,  North  Carolina  led  the  South  in  voter  registra- 
tion. By  1970,  after  a  decade  of  the  biggest  civil-rights  upsurge  in  history, 
the  state  was  at  the  bottom  of  the  ladder  in  Black  registration.  The  state's 
ruling  class  preferred  to  manipulate  voting  procedures  rather  than  deny 
Black  registration  outright,  as  occurred  in  much  of  the  Deep  South 
during  those  years.  Between  1955  and  1969,  most  counties  and  cities 
switched  from  the  ward  system  of  electoral  representation  to  the  council- 
manager  form,  whereby  representatives  are  elected  at-large.  There  being 
no  large  Black  majority  in  any  single  county,  white  supremacy  was 
assured.  Meanwhile,  the  tidy  image  of  moderation  was  preserved.  Again, 
this  splendid  method  of  excluding  Black  representation  was  instituted  in 
the  name  of  reform.  Blacks  became  convinced  that  the  only  way  to  win 
any  election  was  by  "bullet"  voting;  that  is,  casting  the  ballot  for  a  single 
candidate  in  a  large  field  where  more  than  one  office  is  open,  thereby 
increasing  the  worth  of  the  "single-shot"  vote.  The  powers  that  be 
responded  by  outlawing  "single-shot"  votes.  Other  laws  were  passed  to 
force  run-offs  between  the  two  highest  vote-getters  in  elections  where  no 
one  received  a  majority.  Hence,  a  Black  candidate  could  receive  more 
votes  than  any  of  his  eight  white  opponents,  but  if  he  did  not  receive  50 
percent  plus,  he  faced  a  run-off  against  a  single  white  candidate,  and 
near-certain  defeat.  The  at-large  elections  and  anti-"bullet"  laws  help 
■t  explain  why  in  1972  only  3  of 468  county  commissioners  were  Black;  and 
only  12  of  more  than  600  school-board  members  were  Black.35 

38 


One 


Even  as  he  directed  the  Black  Student  Union,  helped  the  Panthers  and 
ran  for  Charlotte  City  Council,  Ben,  together  with  Jim  Grant,  became 
the  organizers  for  Western  North  Carolina  for  the  late  Dr.  King's 
Southern  Christian  Leadership  Conference  (SCLC).  Jim  had  already  set 
up  shop  in  Shelby  at  the  foot  of  the  mountains  in  the  West.  A  young 
Shelby  Black  man,  Robert  Roseboro,  had  been  sent  to  death  row  over 
the  killing  of  a  white  woman.  Jim  organized  a  march  in  that  conservative 
mill  town  demanding  clemency  for  Roseboro  and  jobs  for  Blacks  in 
downtown  Shelby.  More  than  500  people  participated  in  the  march  and 
courthouse  rally,  the  first  in  the  history  of  the  town. 

A  year  earlier,  Marie  Hill,  a  15-year-old  Black  junior  high  school 
student  and  tobacco  hand,  was  arrested  and  charged  with  the  murder  of  a 
white  grocer  in  Rocky  Mount,  in  eastern  Carolina.  She  was  picked  up  in 
South  Carolina  while  on  a  family  visit.  Coerced  into  signing  a  confession 
without  benefit  of  legal  counsel,  she  would  later  repudiate  the  confession. 
After  a  hasty  extradition,  and  without  being  informed  of  her  right  to 
remain  silent,  she  waived  any  preliminary  hearing.  Thus  it  took  less  than 
a  week  for  the  authorities  to  lay  the  basis  for  her  certain  prosecution  and 
conviction,  before  they  allowed  her  to  speak  with  her  parents  or  confer 
with  a  lawyer.  A  few  weeks  later,  Marie  Hill  was  tried  for  murder,  the 
state's  case  being  only  her  forced  confession,  convicted  and  sentenced  to 
die  in  the  gas  chamber. 

Now,  after  the  Shelby  demonstrations  for  Robert  Roseboro,  Jim  and 
Ben,  together  with  SCLC  statewide  coordinator  Golden  Frinks,  de- 
veloped plans  for  a  "Mountaintop  to  the  Valley"  march  to  save  Marie 
Hill.  Starting  in  Thomas  Wolfe's  Asheville  in  the  heart  of  the  Great 
Smokies,  they  set  off  for  the  state  capitol  in  Raleigh,  appealing  for  help 
along  the  way.  The  march  took  25  days  and  perhaps  250  people  went  the 
entire  distance.  But  in  each  village  they  would  pick  up  10  here,  20  there, 
until  they  arrived  at  the  next  town.  Their  appeal  was  to  those  whom  Paul 
Robeson  used  to  sing  of  as  "the  etceteras  and  the  and-so-forths  that  do 
the  work."  Thousands  participated  in  the  hundred  or  so  towns  along  the 
300-mile  route.  The  marchers  arrived  in  Charlotte  at  the  peak  of  the  city 
election  campaign.  City  Council  candidate  Chavis  told  the  city  that  they 
would  sit  in  the  main  intersection  unless  food  was  provided  for  the 
marchers.  The  city  fathers  asked  Johnson  C.  Smith  University  to  feed  the 
good  people;  in  their  haste  to  accommodate  the  demonstrators  and  get 
them  on  their  way  again,  rubber  mattresses  were  provided  for  their 
comfort.  (The  only  woman  in  the  country  on  death  row  at  the  time, 

39 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

Marie  Hill  remained  in  isolation  at  Womens'  Prison  in  Raleigh  for  nearly 
three  years,  until  May  1972.  Her  sentence  was  reduced  to  life  imprison- 
ment after  the  U.S.  Supreme  Court  ruled  against  arbitrary  methods  of 
applying  the  death  penalty.  Since  being  imprisoned,  she  contracted 
gangrene  in  her  foot  and  a  toe  was  amputated.  She  also  developed  ulcers. 
Still  imprisoned,  Marie  Hill  became  25  in  1977.) 

The  only  trade  union  in  Charlotte  to  support  the  Black  Political 
Organization  candidates  was  the  American  Federation  of  State,  County 
and  Municipal  Employees  (AFSCME)  local.  Jim  Pierce,  then  regional 
director  for  AFSCME,  put  Ben  and  Jim  Grant  on  staff  as  the  union 
launched  a  drive  to  organize  the  city's  sanitation  workers.  Ben  had  to 
share  his  time  with  UNCC  where  he  was  now  in  his  senior  year.  Still 
SCLC  coordinator  for  western  North  Carolina,  Ben  was  attracted  to  the 
idea  of  working  for  AFSCME,  in  part  because  his  ideological  mentor, 
Dr.  King,  had  given  his  life  in  the  effort  to  organize  sanitation  workers  in 
Memphis.  In  the  few  months  he  and  Jim  worked  for  the  union, 
AFSCM  E  organized  a  strike.  Their  responsibility  was  to  put  together  the 
picket  lines  and  demonstrations,  to  march  the  workers  downtown  to  city 
hall  and  win  a  contract  that  included  dues  checkoff.  The  garbage  strike 
proved  to  be  the  first  successful  one  in  the  history  of  Charlotte.  That  elite 
did  not  take  kindly  to  the  kind  of  organizing  being  carried  out  by  Messrs. 
Chavis  and  Grant. 

Ben's  first  arrest  came  that  year  on  trespass  charges.  He  and  a  friend, 
Jerome  Johnson,  were  invited  by  students  at  Charlotte's  Second  Ward 
High  School  to  come  speak  on  racism  in  the  school  system.  In  1969,  the 
federal  district  court  ruled  that  Mecklenburg  County's  schools  were 
segregated  and  ordered  busing  to  desegregate  the  schools.  This  was  the 
first  busing  order  by  the  courts  in  the  country  and  the  racist  outroar  that 
followed  throughout  North  Carolina  foreshadowed  later  events  from 
Pontiac,  Michigan,  to  Boston,  Massachussetts.  The  Charlotte  school 
board  decided  to  close  down  Second  Ward,  the  most  prestigious  and 
only  inner-city  Black  high  school  in  town.  The  students  wanted  to  save 
the  school,  so  they  called  in  Ben  and  Jerome  Johnson.  As  Ben  started  to 
address  the  assembled  students,  city  police  rushed  the  stage  and  carried 
him  off.  They  threw  him  into  the  back  of  a  black-and-white  and  began  to 
drive  off,  but  the  students  surrounded  the  car  and  refused  to  let  it  move. 
Out  of  spite,  Jerome  was  arrested  by  the  frustrated  police.  After  some 
negotiations,  the  police  finally  got  Ben  and  Jerome  to  the  jail  and  into  a 
cell.  Curiously,  an  hour  later,  Al  Hood  was  put  into  the  same  cell.  He  said 
that  he  too  was  busted  for  trying  to  speak  at  Second  Ward,  after  Ben  and 
Jerome  were  taken  away. 

40 


One 


Shortly  after  Ben's  release — the  charges  were  eventually  thrown  out  of 
court — Treasury  Department  special  agent  Stanley  Noel  of  the  Alcohol, 
Tobacco  and  Firearms  Bureau  burst  into  Ben's  apartment,  armed  with  a 
shotgun,  on  the  pretext  of  "looking  for  suspects."  In  the  next  few 
months,  Ben  would  be  arrested  twice  more  for  "trespass,"  and  his  home 
and  SCLC  office  busted  into  a  few  more  times.  Presumably,  his  Treasury 
agent  nemesis  was  hard  at  work.  Neither  a  graduate  of  charm  school  nor 
of  law  school — the  U.S.  Constitution  protects  the  right  of  persons  to  be 
"secure  in  their  persons,  houses,  papers  and  effects  against  unreasonable 
search  and  seizure" — Stanley  Noel  had  not  even  been  paying  attention  to 
local  police  and  FBI  directives  urging  the  community  not  to  open  its 
doors  to  strangers.  Perhaps  the  G-man  was  aware  that  his  shotgun  would 
have  a  dampening  effect  on  the  free  flow  of  ideas. 

It  was  time  for  Ben  to  leave  Charlotte. 

Hacking  his  way  through  a  bush  of  decision-making  about  his  future, 
Ben  finally  arrived  back  home  in  Oxford.  His  father  had  been  dead  for 
almost  five  years,  during  most  of  which  time  he  had  been  away  from  his 
mother  and  the  family  home.  He  was  uncertain  of  what  might  come. 
Oxford  was  just  a  small  tobacco  town,  exuding  all  the  Babbitry  of  a 
Shriners'  convention.  There  was  a  sense  for  Ben,  after  the  pace  of 
200,000-strong  metropolitan  Charlotte,  of  stepping  back  into  a  time 
capsule,  and  of  being  rapidly  reduced,  Alice-like,  tumbling  down  into 
this  teeny  wonderland. 

First  things  coming,  as  they  do,  first,  Ben  had  to  find  a  job.  His  family, 
traditionally  teachers,  encouraged  him  to  apply  to  Mary  Potter  High 
School  as  a  teacher.  The  school  board  had  already  announced  that  this, 
1970,  was  to  be  Mary  Potter's  last  year  as  the  town's  all-Black  high 
school,  that  next  year  it  would  become  a  desegregated  junior  high. 

No  more  full-time  teaching  slots  were  available  but  Ben  was  able  to 
hook  on  as  a  substitute.  Every  time  a  teacher  would  call  in  sick,  Ben 
would  fill  in.  Whatever  was  needed,  Ben  would  teach — English,  journal- 
ism, physics,  chemistry,  even  home  economics  one  time.  In  the  course  of 
these  itinerant  wanderings  from  class  to  class,  he  was  able  to  meet  most  of 
the  student  body.  Some  of  the  students  already  knew  of  Ben  through  the 
newspapers,  or  from  his  sister  Francine,  who  graduated  the  previous  year 
as  class  valedictorian. 

If  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  natural-born  organizer,  there  are  at  least 
those  who  catch  a  terminal  dose  of  the  bug  and  Ben  was  one  such. 
Organizing  coursed  through  his  veins,  set  his  heart  to  pumping,  shot 
through  his  body  as  sure  as  adrenalin.  The  kids  at  Mary  Potter,  in  fact  the 
entire  Black  population  in  Oxford,  had  no  recreational  facilities.  The 

41 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

county  had  a  swimming  pool,  but  only  for  whites.  Not  a  single  public 
basketball  court  was  available  for  Blacks.  So  the  students  got  together 
with  Ben  Chavis,  at  age  21  their  adult  advisor,  to  form  the  Granville 
County  Steering  Committee  for  Black  Progress.  The  Steering  Commit- 
tee met  with  the  city  council  to  demand  playgrounds,  courts,  swimming 
pools,  but  the  council  responded  with  a  hand  as  heavy  as  a  bucket  of  wet 
sand.  Black  Oxfordians  could  look  forward  to  another  very  long,  hot 
summer. 

They  got  an  early  start  that  year.  On  May  11,  Jimmy  Chavis,  Ben's 
cousin,  and  Henry  Marrow,  a  former  classmate  who  had  just  come  back 
from  Vietnam,  and  some  other  young  men  were  standing  in  front  of 
Robert  Teel's  business  enterprise.  Teel  was  the  local  Klan  leader,  a  fact 
well  known  throughout  Granville  County.  A  week  earlier,  Teel  had 
beaten  up  a  Black  teacher  in  Oxford  who  had  accused  Teel  of  cheating 
him  out  of  some  gasoline.  The  teacher  had  sworn  out  a  warrant  against 
Teel  but  the  police  refused  to  serve  it.  Now,  this  Tuesday  afternoon,  one 
of  the  youngsters  whistled  at  Teel's  wife.  The  Klan  leader  ran  into  his 
store,  came  back  out  with  his  son  and  stepson,  armed  with  shotguns,  and 
started  firing  into  the  crowd  of  20  Black  youths.  The  young  men  ran,  but 
pellets  hit  Henry  Marrow  and  Jimmy  Chavis.  Jimmy  was  able  to  crawl 
into  a  nearby  patch  of  grass  and  hide  but  Henry  wasn't  so  lucky.  He  fell  to 
the  ground,  bleeding  from  the  back  and  the  knee.  One  of  the  Teel  men  got 
an  axe  handle  and  beat  in  Henry  Marrow's  head.  Then  Robert  Teel 
ordered  his  son  Larry  to  shoot  Henry  dead.  Larry  placed  his  Owen 
under-410-gauge  shotgun  with  a  .22  on  top  against  the  dying  man's 
temple  and  blew  his  head  off. 

The  kids  who  had  witnessed  the  shooting  rushed  over  to  the  Soul 
Kitchen,  Ben's  family-owned  Ridley  Drive-in,  with  its  name  and  decor 
changed  to  attract  young  people.  Ben  was  working  the  Soul  Kitchen 
when  the  youngsters  came  in  to  tell  their  story.  He  listened  a  moment, 
and  decided  to  go  directly  to  the  Teels  to  investigate.  Finding  the  grocery 
open  as  usual  for  business,  he  went  to  the  police  station,  where  the  chief 
said  that  he  hadn't  arrested  the  Teels  because  he  still  lacked  full  informa- 
tion. 

The  next  day  was  one  of  Ben's  teaching  days,  but  rather  than  hold 
class,  he  met  with  the  entire  student  body  in  front  of  the  school.  Nobody 
went  to  class  that  day.  All  450  students  joined  Ben  to  march  on  the 
courthouse  to  demand  justice.  The  principal  threatened  expulsions  but 
still  the  students  marched.  At  the  courthouse,  they  learned  that  the  State 
Bureau  of  Investigation  had  arrested  the  Teels  and  brought  them  to 
Raleigh  for  safekeeping.  Ben  announced  a  meeting  that  night  in  the  field 

42 


One 

in  back  of  the  Soul  Kitchen.  He  appealed  to  the  students  to  bring  their 
parents  when  they  came  home  from  the  tobacco  fields  and  the  mills. 
Nearly  a  thousand  folks  gathered  that  night  to  declare  the  next  day  Black 
Thursday. 

Nobody  would  go  to  school;  they  were  going  to  march  again.  They  met 
at  the  First  Baptist  Church  in  early  morning.  This  time  more  than  just  the 
kids  showed  up.  From  8  to  80,  they  came  to  march.  Ben  appealed  to  the 
crowd  to  exhibit  solemnity.  This  was  not  to  be  a  jovial  march.  He  recalls, 
"We  weren't  going  to  have  a  whole  lot  of  laughing,  because  white  people 
in  town  were  used  to  seeing  Black  folks  as  hee-hawing  happy-go-lucky 
peons.  None  of  that  this  time.  We  wouldn't  give  the  white  structure  a 
chance  to  deceive  itself  this  time."  All  you  could  hear  that  morning  from 
the  church  to  the  courthouse  and  back  was  the  pat-pat-pat  of  marching 
feet. 

The  Steering  Committee  for  Black  Progress  became  a  community 
organization,  holding  regular  meetings  at  the  First  Baptist  Church. 
Through  his  activities  in  Oxford,  Ben  came  to  the  attention  of  Reverend 
Leon  White  of  nearby  Henderson.  White  was  director  of  the  United 
Church  of  Christ's  Commission  for  Racial  Justice  for  North  Carolina 
and  Virginia.  He  was  looking  to  hire  an  organizer  who  could  tap  the 
growing  Black  resistance  in  the  state.  Ben  was  obviously  the  man  for  the 
job. 

When  the  state  held  a  bond  hearing  for  the  Teels,  to  which  the 
president  of  one  of  Oxford's  banks  and  other  Chamber  of  Commerce 
elders  testified  as  to  the  good  character  of  the  defendants,  Ben  and  the 
Steering  Committee  set  into  motion  two  actions.  They  called  a  consum- 
er's boycott  of  Oxford's  downtown  stores.  And  they  decided  to  hold  a 
funeral  march  for  Henry  Marrow,  from  Oxford  to  Raleigh,  34  miles 
away.  Setting  out  with  a  wagon,  a  mule  and  a  casket,  the  Oxford  folks 
began  the  three-day  trek  with  the  intention  of  gaining  an  audience  with 
Governor  Bob  Scott  to  appeal  for  justice.  Henry  Marrow's  pregnant 
widow  joined  them  for  the  duration.  Along  the  way  they  held  local  rallies 
in  churches  in  Creedmor  and  Raleigh.  Starting  out  from  Oxford  with  200 
marchers,  they  arrived  at  the  governor's  office  with  a  thousand.  They  had 
made  an  appointment  with  the  governor  but  he  refused  to  see  them.  The 
angry  marchers  returned  to  Oxford.  Their  anger  was  matched  by  that  of 
the  people  who  remained  in  Oxford.  When  word  came  of  the  governor's 
lack  of  good  faith,  Oxford  went  up  in  flames.  Warehouses  caught  fire, 
burning  a  million  dollars  worth  of  tobacco  sold  to  the  U.S.  government. 
Now  Governor  Scott  became  more  responsive.  He  ordered  Oxford  under 
curfew  and  sent  in  the  state  riot  squad,  under  the  aegis  of  the  highway 

43 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

patrol.  Everybody  was  to  be  off  the  city  streets  by  6  p.m.  for  the  next  10 

days. 

The  Steering  Committee  began  to  meet  at  the  Soul  Kitchen  again, 
because  it  was  outside  the  Oxford  town  limits.  Committee  members 
would  stay  all  night  or  sneak  back  home  through  highway  patrol  lines. 
As  many  as  200  came  to  these  nightly  meetings.  Earlier,  Jim  Grant  and 
Joe  Goins,  another  friend  from  Charlotte,  had  come  up  to  Raleigh  to  join 
the  march  on  the  governor's  office  and  had  returned  to  Oxford  with  the 
disappointed  demonstrators.  Jim  was  now  on  the  staff  of  the  Southern 
Conference  Education  Fund  (SCEF),  based  in  Louisville,  Kentucky.  He 
remained  in  Oxford  on  behalf  of  SCEF  and  its  newspaper,  the  Southern 
Patriot. 

During  one  of  the  Steering  Committee's  afternoon  meetings,  a  strange 
car  drove  into  the  Soul  Kitchen  parking  lot.  Al  Hood  and  David 
Washington  had  also  arrived  from  Charlotte.  Came  to  help,  they  said. 
But  the  meeting  was  in  progress,  so  Ben  and  Jim  told  them  to  come  back 
later  that  night  if  they  wanted  to  talk.  Joe  Goins  took  off  with  Hood  and 
Washington,  and  they  were  never  seen  again  in  Oxford.  The  next  day, 
Ben  and  Jim  heard  that  they  had  been  busted.  Seems  they  had  driven  up 
to  a  highway  patrol  roadblock  with  a  car  full  of  dynamite. 

Things  cooled  down  in  Oxford  for  a  short  while.  But  the  Teel  murder 
trial  was  scheduled  for  the  summer,  and  the  Klan  began  to  hold  statewide 
rallies  in  Oxford  to  raise  money  for  the  defense.  Advertisements  calling 
upon  all  white  people  to  "stand  up"  in  Oxford  appeared  in  the  local  press. 
The  trial  was  presided  over  by  Judge  Robert  Martin  of  High  Point,  one 
of  a  dozen  circuit-riding  judges  in  the  state  superior  court.  An  all-white 
jury  was  selected  to  render  the  verdict.  The  Steering  Committee  hired 
attorney  James  Ferguson  of  Charlotte  to  serve  as  private  prosecutor, 
which  was  allowed  under  one  of  North  Carolina's  more  peculiar  ancient 
statutes.  The  trial  had  about  as  much  quiet  reserve  as  a  Legionaire 
smoker.  Robert  Teel  announced  in  court  that  he  was  going  to  dynamite 
the  Soul  Kitchen.  During  a  court  recess  following  this  remarkable 
testimony,  Teel  picked  up  a  chair  and  tried  to  attack  attorney  Ferguson. 
Judge  Martin  sat  with  his  head  down,  refusing  to  acknowledge  the 
incident.  The  jury,  for  its  part,  acquitted  the  Teels. 

The  Steering  Committee  for  Black  Progress  moved  into  action  again. 
Pickets  marched  every  day  to  build  the  boycott  of  downtown  merchants. 
Car  pools  were  organized  to  take  shoppers  to  Henderson,  11  miles  away. 
A  number  of  businesses  were  forced  to  close  down.  The  Steering 
Committee  upped  its  ante.  It  was  no  longer  protesting  the  murder  of 
Henry  Marrow  only,  but  was  demanding  Black  salespeople  in  the  stores 

44 


One 

and  Blacks  in  local  law  enforcement  agencies.  The  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce finally  agreed.  Blacks  were  hired  in  the  stores  for  the  first  time,  the 
one  Black  policeman  was  made  a  lieutenant,  several  others  were  hired, 
and  Granville  County  got  its  first  Black  sheriffs  deputy.  On  behalf  of  the 
Commission  for  Racial  Justice,  Ben  organized  a  statewide  Black  Soli- 
darity Day  on  August  22,  1970,  and  4,000  people  came  to  celebrate. 

In  September,  the  federal  explosives-possession  trial  of  Al  Hood, 
David  Washington  and  Joe  Coins  was  set  to  be  held  in  Raleigh.  One 
morning  before  the  trial,  Hood  and  Washington  came  to  the  Soul 
Kitchen  and  asked  Ben  to  cash  a  $100  check  they  received  from  Jim 
Grant.  The  money  was  to  help  pay  for  the  trial,  they  explained.  On  the 
morning  the  trial  was  scheduled  to  open,  Ben  and  Jim  went  to  Raleigh. 
When  the  bailiff  called  out  the  names  of  the  defendants,  Joe  Goins  was 
there  but  Hood  and  Washington  were  not.  Federal  fugitive  warrants 
were  issued  and  the  judge  called  the  FBI  into  the  case. 

Three  months  later,  just  before  Christmas,  Ben  read  in  the  Charlotte 
Observer  that  Hood  and  Washington  had  turned  themselves  in  to  the 
government,  after  returning  from  Canada. 

Curiouser  and  curiouser. 


45 


Two 


In  Harrisburg,  Pa.,  it  was  disclosed  that  Col.  Or  an  K. 
Henderson,  the  highest-ranking  officer  charged  in  the 
My  Lai  massacre  .  .  .  has  gone  to  work,  for  the 
Pennsylvania  Bicentennial  Commission.  .  .  .  Colonel 
Henderson,  in  his  $16,900-a-yearjob,  would  coordinate 
the  Congress  of  World  Unity,  a  meeting  of  philoso- 
phers from  all  over  the  world,  to  draft  a  'declaration  of 
human  rights.' 

The  New  York  Times,  September  18,  1974 


i  J  uther  Hodges  became  governor  back  in  1955,  just  six  months 
after  the  U.S.  Supreme  Court  ruled  in  Brown  v.  Topeka  Board  of 
Education  that  segregation  in  the  schools  was  unconstitutional.  Hodges' 
autobiography,  Businessman  in  the  Statehouse, 1  reads  like  he  discovered 
in  office  that  there  is  no  Tooth  Fairy  and  he  is  disturbed  with  this 
newfound  knowledge.  Part  of  his  inheritance  from  his  predecessor  was 
the  report  to  the  General  Assembly  by  former  Governor  Umstead's 
Special  Advisory  Committee  on  Education.  Its  objectives  were  "the 
preservation  of  public  education  and  the  preservation  of  the  peace"  in 
the  state.  The  report  concluded,  according  to  Hodges,  that  "the  mixing  of 
the  races  forthwith  in  the  public  schools  could  not  be  accomplished  and 
should  not  be  attempted";  attempts  to  fill  the  Court's  requirements 
"without  materially  altering  or  abandoning  the  existing  school  system" 
should  be  made;2  and  another  committee  should  be  set  up  to  make 
further  recommendations. 

Hodges  grabbed  the  third  recommendation  first  and  named  former 
North  Carolina  House  speaker  Thomas  Pearsall  to  head  up  a  new  panel. 
Pearsall  came  with  experience  to  the  task,  for  he  also  chaired  the 
Umstead  advisory  committee  that  made  the  initial  recommendations. 
The  first  panel  had  nineteen  members,  three  of  whom  were  Black. 
"Unfortunately,"  wrote  Gov.  Hodges,  "these  particular  Negro  represen- 
tatives were  on  the  state  payroll  and  were  'suspect'  by  the  state's  Negro 
citizenship."  They  were  "high-grade,  honest  representatives"  but  were  in 
"a  tough  situation"  because  they  "were  under  great  pressure  from  their 
fellow-Negroes,  many  of  whom  felt  strongly  that  there  should  be  imme- 
diate integration."  The  governor  and  Pearsall  discussed  "carefully  and 
prayerfully"  the  racial  composition  of  the  new  seven-member  committee. 
They  finally  decided  not  to  "include  a  Negro  because  a  Negro  member  of 
such  a  small  group"  would  be  under  impossibly  difficult  "outside  pres- 
sure." The  new  Pearsall  panel  avoided  this  problem;  all  seven  members 
were  white.3 

Meanwhile,  carrying  the  legal  burden  for  North  Carolina  was  Assis- 

49 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

tant  Attorney  General  I.  Beverly  Lake,  of  whom  it  can  be  said  as  it  was  of 
Churchill,  "There  but  for  the  grace  of  God,  goes  God."  In  an  amicus 
curiae  brief  for  the  state  before  the  U.S.  Supreme  Court  in  1955,  Dr.  Lake 
argued  that  "an  attempt  to  compel  the  intermixture  of  the  races  in  the 
public  schools  of  North  Carolina  would  result  in  such  violent  opposition 
as  to  endanger  the  continued  existence  of  the  schools."  Over  statewide 
television,  Lake — now  a  State  Supreme  Court  Justice — proclaimed, 
"The  N  AACP's  objective  is  not  better  schools  for  the  Negro  children.  Its 
ultimate  objective  is  the  blending  of  the  white  and  Negro  races  into  a 
mixed-blooded  whole."  And,  also  from  Mr.  Justice  Lake:  "The  mixture 
of  our  two  great  races  in  the  classroom  and  then  in  the  home  is  not 
inevitable  and  is  not  to  be  tolerated."  Lake,  "speaking  as  a  private  citizen 
or  at  least  attempting  to  do  so,"  according  to  Hodges,  "advised  commu- 
nities to  close  their  schools  rather  than  submit"  to  the  decision  of  the  high 
court.  The  North  Carolina  branch  of  the  N  AACP  called  on  the  governor 
to  dismiss  Lake.  After  all,  here  was  the  assistant  attorney  general,  the 
second  highest  law  enforcement  official  in  the  state,  urging  the  citizenry 
to  break  the  law  of  the  land  en  masse.  Governor  Hodges  was  incensed  at 
the  demand.  He  immediately  issued  a  statement:  "I  am  amazed  that  this 
private  organization,  whose  policies  are  determined  in  its  national  office 
in  New  York  and  are  obviously  designed  to  split  North  Carolina  citizens 
into  racial  camps,  and  which  I  am  convinced  does  not  actually  represent 
any  substantial  portion  of  our  Negro  citizens,  should  have  the  effrontery 
to  make  such  a  request."  He  would  not  accede  to  the  demand:  "On  the 
contrary,  it  is  my  intention  to  use  every  means  at  my  command  to  retain 
for  the  state  the  services  of  this  distinguished  lawyer."  One  is  reminded  of 
the  reply  of  a  segregationist  lawyer  to  Robert  Penn  Warren  who  asked  if 
Autherine  Lucy,  the  first  Black  woman  to  enter  the  University  of 
Alabama,  wasn't  acting  under  law.  "Yes,  yes,"  said  the  lawyer,  "but  it  was 
just  the  Federal  Court  ruled  it." 

Hodges  went  on  television  to  present  a  plan  for  "voluntary  separation 
of  the  races."  Speaking  "directly  to  the  Negro  citizens,"  he  appealed: 
"Any  stigma  you  may  have  felt  because  of  laws  requiring  segregation  in 
our  public  schools  has  now  been  removed  by  the  courts.  No  right- 
thinking  man  resents  your  desire  for  equality  under  the  law.  At  the  same 
time,  no  right-thinking  man  would  advise  you  to  destroy  the  hopes  of 
your  race  and  the  white  race  by  superficial  and  'show-off  actions  to 
demonstrate  this  equality.  Only  the  person  who  feels  he  is  inferior  must 

resort  to  demonstrations  to  prove  that  he  is  not  "  And  finally:  "A  race 

which  can  achieve  equality  has  no  need  to  lose  itself  in  another  race."4 

I.  Beverly  Lake  drafted  a  counter  plan  to  abolish  the  constitutional 

50 


Two 

requirements  for  public  schools.  It  would  have  had  the  General  Assem- 
bly provide  grants  to  parents  of  children  enrolled  in  private  schools.  The 
bill  was  introduced  into  the  state  senate  by  Lake's  protege,  then  state 
senator  Robert  Morgan  of  Harnett.  In  the  end  the  Pearsall-Hodges  plan 
won,  and  the  governor  was  exuberant.  (Morgan  lived  in  Lake's  house  for 
three  years  while  a  student  of  Lake's  at  Wake  Forest  Law  School.  When 
Lake  later  went  onto  the  Supreme  Court,  "Morgan  is  generally  regarded 
as  having  assumed  the  mantle  of  leadership  to  the  Lake  political  faction." 
(News  and  Observer,  April  10, 1969.)  Morgan  served  as  state's  Attorney 
General  in  the  late  1960s  and  1970s,  during  the  period  of  court-ordered 
school  desegregation  by  busing.  In  that  office  he  supervised  the  arrests 
and  imprisonment  of  the  militant  leadership  of  the  Black  student  move- 
ment. While  Morgan  was  making  his  successful  run  for  the  U.S.  Senate 
in  1974,  Lake  was  still  considered  the  Godfather  of  the  Morgan  wing  of 
the  Democratic  Party,  according  to  Mason  Thomas  of  the  University  of 
North  Carolina's  Institute  of  Government.  Such  were  Democratic  Party 
politics  and  consequently  North  Carolina  state  politics,  that  these  two 
racist  options,  were  presented  to  the  voting  public  as  "moderate"  versus 
"conservative." 

By  1966,  a  dozen  years  after  desegregation  was  declared  the  law  of  the 
land,  only  6  percent  of  North  Carolina's  Black  children  were  enrolled  in 
school  with  whites.  The  relationship  between  racist  school  systems  and 
quality  education,  for  Blacks  and  whites,  can  be  seen  in  a  study  by  the 
North  Carolina  Fund  of  that  year.  One  of  six  state  residents  over  24  years 
old  had  not  achieved  a  5th  grade  education.  Less  than  half  the  number  of 
those  entering  first  grade  completed  the  twelfth  grade,  a  full  one-quarter 
below  than  the  national  average.  More  than  half  the  armed  forces 
draftees  from  the  state  failed  their  pre-induction  mental  tests.  Less  than  8 
percent  of  the  population  was  employed  as  professional  or  technical 
workers,  the  lowest  rate  in  the  United  States. 

Eighteen  years  after  the  Brown  decision,  North  Carolina  officials  still 
felt  that  the  federal  courts  were  raining  on  their  parade.  Asked  in  1972  to 
cite  the  state's  number  one  problem,  Senator  Sam  Ervin,  Jr.,  answered, 
"Busing."  Just  as  his  Senate  career  began  with  his  staunch  opposition  to 
the  Supreme  Court's  1954  ruling,  Ervin  finished  out  his  career  on  the 
same  note.  When,  in  Swann  v.  Charlotte-  Mecklenburg  Board  of  Educa- 
tion, the  federal  district  court  ordered  busing  to  desegregate  the  schools 
of  North  Carolina's  biggest  city  and  subsequently  the  whole  state,  Ervin 
went  before  the  U.S.  Supreme  Court  as  attorney  for  the  Charlotte- 
Mecklenburg  Classroom  Teachers  Association  to  fight  the  court's  ruling. 

For  a  quarter  of  a  century  the  main  racist  thrust  in  North  Carolina  was 

51 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 


on  the  issue  of  school  desegregation.  After  the  Swann  decision,  violence 
broke  out  in  dozens  of  cities  and  hamlets  throughout  the  state.  For  a 
period  the  SCu  Klux  Klan  was  revived  and  new  paramilitary  groupings 
came  together,  such  as  the  Rights  of  White  People  organization  in 
eastern  North  Carolina.  Several  hundred  Black  schoolchildren  and 
students  were  jailed  and  their  leaders  imprisoned  for  long  sentences.  The 
usually  outspoken  Sam  Ervin  maintained  a  curious  silence  about  the 
repression  of  the  Black  student  movement.  But  in  the  Senate  he  pressed 
for  a  law  to  end  the  "horrible  tyranny"  of  school  busing.5 

Despite  his  elucidating  such  a  dubious,  though  popular,  proposition, 
Ervin  lost  favor  with  his  electoral  base.  The  Watergate  investigation 
proved  to  be  his  last  hurrah.  Richard  Nixon  had,  after  all,  won  the  1972 
presidential  election  in  North  Carolina  as  nearly  everywhere  else;  and 
Nixon  too  was  a  staunch  opponent  of  busing.  Ironically  school  desegre- 
gation, long  the  Dixiecrats'  favorite  issue,  played  a  great  role  in  breaking 
up  the  solid  South,  including  solid  North  Carolina.  The  Nixon  "South- 
ern Strategy"  was  based,  in  the  first  place,  on  a  not  very  subtle  appeal  to 
racist  fears.  The  strategy,  despite  its  public  moniker,  was  national  in 
scope— designed  to  appeal  to  the  voters  of  the  Detroit  suburbs  and  to 
those  of  Greenville,  Mississippi.  North  Carolina  was  a  testing  ground  for 
its  appeal.  Most  political  observers  in  the  state  agree  that  the  Nixon 
appeal,  combined  with  the  "pro-busing"  sentiments  of  the  national 
Democratic  Party,  brought  about  the  reemergence  of  the  Republican 
Party  in  North  Carolina.  For  the  first  time  in  this  century,  a  Republican, 
James  Holshouser,  was  elected  to  sit  in  the  governor's  mansion  in 
Raleigh,  and  another,  Jesse  Helms,  to  represent  the  state  in  the  U.S. 
Senate.  Sim  A.  Delapp,  a  former  state  GOP  chairman,  remarked,  "The 
leadership  hasn't  brought  this  party  to  where  it  is  now.  I  can  tell  you 
what's  brought  it— and  any  man  that  knows  politics  knows.  The  race 
question  brought  it."6 


W  hat  you  felt  mostly  was  scared  if  you  were  young  and  Black  in 
those  first  couple  of  years  following  the  federal  busing  order  in  Mecklen- 
burg County.  North  Carolina  became  a  focus  of  racist  terror,  of  mass 
jailings  of  Black  students,  and  finally  of  numerous  political  trials  and  the 
long  imprisonment  of  scores  of  key  activists  and  leaders — Black  and 
white. 

From  hundreds  of  cases  in  those  years,  consider  only  the  following: 
Charles  Lee  Parker  of  Roanoke  Rapids  was  sentenced  to  life  imprison- 


52 


Two 


ment  on  a  burglary  charge,  although  the  federal  district  court  in  Raleigh 
held  that  he  was  indicted  by  an  illegal  grand  jury.  Parker,  whose  mother 
was  for  years  active  in  the  Black  community,  was  15  years  old  at  time  of 
sentencing. 

In  Greenville,  a  white  youth  and  a  young  Black  man  were  charged  with 
raping  a  white  woman.  Both  defendants  denied  the  charges.  They  were 
given  separate  trials.  The  white  boy  was  freed,  the  Black  sent  to  prison  for 
life. 

Nathan  Shoffner,  an  elderly  Black  man  in  Greensboro,  was  shot  to 
death  by  state  patrolman  R.A.  Clark,  after  a  highway  accident.  Shoffner 
was  alleged  to  have  threatened  the  patrolman  with  a  knife,  before  he  was 
shot  in  the  leg  and  allowed  to  bleed  to  death  on  the  highway.  Clark  was 
cleared  of  any  criminal  intent.  A  month  before,  an  unarmed  20-year-old, 
Michael  Riggins,  was  shot  in  the  back  by  a  Greensboro  policeman  who 
claimed  Riggins  was  running  from  the  scene  of  a  crime.  The  death  was 
ruled  justifiable  homicide. 

Another  young  Black  man,  Lawrence  Covington,  returned  home  to 
the  rural  town  of  Laurinburg  after  receiving  an  engineering  degree  in  the 
North.  Hired  by  a  poverty  program,  he  became  a  defender  of  the  Black 
community  against  police  brutality,  and  joined  a  local  school  boycott. 
He  was  then  accused  of  raping  a  16-year-old  white  woman  on  Thanksgiv- 
ing eve,  1970.  The  alleged  victim,  whose  husband  was  in  the  service,  said 
that  she  had  come  to  Covington  for  food  stamps  for  Thanksgiving;  that 
after  they  had  talked  about  her  returning  to  school  to  get  a  high  school 
diploma,  he  turned  out  the  light  and  had  sexual  relations  with  her.  The 
young  woman  was  involved  in  a  similar  incident  some  months  earlier 
with  two  Black  men,  a  case  in  which  the  charges  were  dropped.  Three 
months  after  being  jailed,  Covington  was  granted  bail  of  $15,000.  But  it 
was  more  than  he  had  and  he  remained  in  jail.  His  trial  by  an  all-white 
jury  was  halted  pending  a  psychiatric  examination.  The  long  period  of 
confinement  had  had  an  adverse  effect  on  Covington's  nerves. 

In  Charlotte,  Roy  and  Leroy  Miller,  21-year-old  twins,  were  stopped 
by  police  for  questioning  about  a  car  theft.  Roy  Miller  was  shot  at  point- 
blank  range  by  patrolman  J.S.  Swain.  He  was  left  on  the  pavement  for 
almost  an  hour  and  a  half  while  he  bled  to  death,  although  two 
ambulances  arrived  immediately.  Leroy  Miller  was  arrested  and  beaten 
at  police  headquarters  until  he  pleaded  guilty  to  14  counts  of  housebreak- 
ing and  3  of  resisting  arrest.  He  was  sentenced  to  8  to  10  years  in  prison. 
The  Miller  twins  are  Black,  the  police  white.  Also  in  Charlotte,  patrol- 
man J.D.  Ensminger  killed  18-year-old  Frankie  Dunlap  after  Dunlap 
allegedly  attacked  the  officer  with  an  "Afro"  comb.  The  police  chief 

53 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

would  not  suspend  Ensminger;  the  grand  jury  refused  to  bring  an 
indictment  against  him. 

Police  in  High  Point  conducted  an  early  morning  raid  against  the 
Black  Community  Information  Center,  in  what  law  enforcement  offi- 
cials said  was  an  effort  to  evict  the  occupants.  The  building  was  owned  by 
a  district  court  judge  who,  when  told  who  the  tenants  were,  ordered  the 
eviction.  No  reason  was  given  for  the  action  and  none  need  be  under 
North  Carolina  law.  The  eviction  party  included  75  city,  county  and  state 
police,  armed  with  tear  gas,  bullet-proof  vests  and  automatic  shotguns. 
Clearly  this  was  a  landlord  with  a  vengeance.  The  cops  sealed  off  the 
Black  community  at  6  a.m.,  an  unusual  precaution  for  serving  an  eviction 
notice.  The  assault  on  the  office  was  led  by  H  igh  Point  police  chief  Laurie 
Pritchett,  who  came  to  national  notice  as  chief  of  police  in  Albany, 
Georgia,  in  the  early  1960s.  He  was  known  there  to  lock  up  every  man, 
woman  and  child  who  dared  protest  racial  injustice  in  that  town.  Many 
were  beaten  in  the  Albany  jail  and  police  even  threatened  one  young  girl 
with  rape  by  a  police  dog. 

In  Charlotte,  the  law  offices  of  Chambers,  Stein,  Ferguson  and 
Lanning,  the  firm  which  won  the  school-busing  suit,  were  burned  to  the 
ground.  Soon  afterwards,  a  business  in  Montgomery  County,  50  miles 
away,  owned  by  the  father  of  Julius  Chambers,  head  of  the  law  firm,  was 
also  set  afire.  A  few  years  earlier,  Chambers  had  escaped  assassination 
when  his  house  was  dynamited.  The  FBI  and  police  made  no  arrests  in 
any  of  the  incidents. 

Since  the  court  had  ordered  desegregation  of  the  Charlotte  schools, 
the  state's  high  schools  had  become  the  scenes  of  regular  clashes  between 
Black  students  and  white  students  inflamed  by  racist  propaganda  or 
police.  The  Blacks  without  exception  came  up  short.  Over  200  persons 
were  arrested  in  Edenton,  for  example,  growing  out  of  protests  over  the 
firing  of  a  Black  band  director  in  a  local  high  school.  Most  of  those  jailed 
were  booked  on  charges  of  parading  without  a  permit  or  blocking  traffic 
as  they  marched  downtown.  Six  were  arrested  for  burning  a  Confederate 
flag,  charged  with  "mutilating,  defacing  and  defiling  the  flag."  Presuma- 
bly the  authorities  considered  the  Stars  and  Bars  as  the  legal  symbol  to 
which  they  owed  allegiance. 

In  Wilson,  6  teenage  boys  and  girls  were  imprisoned  after  a  Black- 
white  high  school  clash  in  which  16  Blacks  and  one  white  were  arrested. 
On  pronouncing  sentence  the  judge  allowed  as  how,  "We're  tired  of  all 
this  protesting.  We've  got  the  guns,  we've  got  the  money,  and  we've  got 
you  outnumbered.  We're  going  to  stop  you  in  this  way  or  people  are 
going  to  take  things  into  their  own  hands." 

54 


Two 

The  Statesville  high  school  closed  for  a  few  days  and  several  students 
were  hospitalized  after  a  free-for-all  over  a  white  bus  driver's  refusal  to  let 
a  Black  student  board  the  bus.  There  were  711  whites  and  171  Blacks  at  the 
school.  Mayor  Francis  R.  Quis  urged  parents  of  the  white  students  who 
were  hospitalized  to  swear  out  warrants  against  Black  students,  whom  he 
described  as  "criminals."  He  said  that  "justice  would  be  swift  and  sure." 
Police  serving  papers  on  one  sixteen-year-old  Black  student,  beat  him, 
his  mother  and  younger  sister,  and  brought  them  down  to  the  jail,  leaving 
behind  a  one-year-old  child  alone. 

School  was  also  closed  and  several  students  sent  to  the  hospital  in  the 
mill  town  of  Kings  Mountain,  when  a  group  of  Black  teenagers  was 
attacked  by  a  larger  group  of  whites  armed  with  sticks.  Two  Black 
students,  but  no  whites,  were  suspended  in  the  wake  of  the  beatings.  The 
principal  at  Kings  Mountain,  who  referred  to  Black  students  as 

"n  s,"  took  no  action  against  white  students  who  brought  guns  to 

school. 

About  200  Black  students  walked  out  of  school  in  South  Mecklenburg 
after  a  fight  between  Black  and  white  students.  Several  carloads  of 
county  police  arrested  some  of  the  students  leaving  the  school,  on 
grounds  of  disorderly  conduct.  The  next  day  more  Black  students  stayed 
home  as  17  county  police  in  riot  gear  patrolled  the  school.  Both  West 
Mecklenburg  and  Myers  Park  high  schools  were  closed  after  fights 
between  whites  and  Blacks.  The  white  racist  "Concerned  Parents  Asso- 
ciation" had  sent  their  children  to  West  Mecklenburg  in  the  1960s  to 
escape  court-ordered  desegregation;  subsequently,  Black  students  who 

transferred  there  in  the  1970s  were  called  "n  s"  and  "boys"  by  their 

teachers.  A  school  coach  publicly  announced  that  if  he  were  20  years 
younger,  he  would  "go  out  and  kill  me  some  n  s." 

Teachers  in  Pender  County  openly  boasted  of  membership  in  the  Ku 
Klux  Klan  or  in  the  Rights  of  White  People,  another  terrorist  organiza- 
tion. But  a  Black  student  was  expelled  from  school  on  grounds  of 
"suspicion"  of  belonging  to  the  Black  Panther  Party. 

Numerous  incidents  occurred  around  the  efforts  of  Black  students  to 
observe  the  birthday  of  the  Rev.  Martin  Luther  King,  Jr.  At  Charlotte's 
Garinger  High,  fire  drills  were  started  by  whites  during  Dr.  King's 
birthday  memorial,  and  white  non-students  appeared  on  campus  with 
machetes,  trying  to  provoke  fights  with  Black  pupils.  At  Harding  High 
School,  Black  students  were  refused  permission  to  hold  a  memorial  for 
Dr.  King,  and  those  who  attended  services  at  nearby  Johnson  C.  Smith 
University  were  suspended.  Yet  school  officials  sanctioned  country-and- 
western  music  shows  and  religious  programs  for  white  students. 

55 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

Sixty-nine  Black  high-school  students  were  arrested  on  felony  charges 
of  rioting,  after  fights  with  whites  at  Myers  Park,  South  Mecklenburg 
and  Olympic  high  schools  in  Charlotte.  Although  evidence  indicated  that 
whites  started  the  fights  in  each  case,  only  two  whites  were  apprehended, 
and  they  were  set  free  after  a  preliminary  hearing.  The  Black  students 
remained  in  jail  for  weeks. 

The  village  of  Ayden  was  torn  apart  by  months  of  turmoil  initially 
sparked  by  the  killing  of  William  Murphy,  a  Black  farm  laborer,  by  white 
patrolman  Billy  Day.  Murphy  was  shot  to  death  while  in  handcuffs.  Day 
said  he  arrested  Murphy  for  drunkenness,  but  Murphy's  employer  said 
the  man  was  "not  noticeably  intoxicated"  when  he  saw  him  five  minutes 
before  the  arrest.  The  Ayden  hospital  refused  to  perform  an  autopsy,  but 
an  examination  at  a  Chapel  Hill  funeral  parlor  found  that  Murphy  was 
shot  in  the  back.  The  coroner's  jury  held  that  patrolman  Day  shot  the 
man  in  self-defense.  Day  was  promoted  to  the  highway  patrol's  personnel 
department. 

Protests  of  the  killing  came  immediately  from  the  American  Civil 
Liberties  Union,  the  NAACP,  the  Black  Panther  Party,  the  Southern 
Christian  Leadership  Conference,  the  Black  Pastors'  Conference  of  Pitt 
County  and  the  Commission  for  Racial  Justice.  In  response,  Ayden 
authorities  declared  a  curfew  to  prevent  picket  demonstrations  and 
hundreds  of  demonstrators  were  arrested.  The  Rights  of  White  People 
offered  to  send  300  men  to  Ayden  "to  keep  order." 

The  Klan  threatened  to  bomb  the  Ayden-Grifton  High  School  rather 
than  permit  desegregation.  Shortly  thereafter  a  bomb  exploded  in  a  rest 
room  in  the  school.  Nobody  was  nearby,  so  no  one  was  hurt.  No 
fingerprints  were  found,  no  eye-witnesses  located,  no  evidence  of  any 
kind  discovered.  Still,  deputy  sheriffs  arrested  a  13-year-old  Black 
student  and  threatened  him  with  death  if  he  didn't  "name  others."  The 
boy  said  police  held  a  gun  to  his  head  at  the  time.  He  finally  gave  names 
of  several  other  boys  who  were  active  in  the  Pitt  County  movement.  One 
of  those  named,  Donald  Smith,  17,  son  of  a  factory  worker,  confessed  to 
the  bombing  after  being  denied  the  right  to  see  a  lawyer  and  being 
threatened  by  police  if  he  didn't  confess.  His  forced  confession  was  the 
only  evidence  against  him. 

Donald's  trial  was  a  startling  example  of  New  Southern  justice. 
During  the  proceedings  the  judge  indicated  to  the  jury  his  belief  in  the 
guilt  of  the  defendant.  The  prosecuting  attorney  took  the  members  of  the 
jury  to  dinner  just  before  they  returned  their  verdict.  When  the  guilty 
verdict  was  announced,  the  prosecutor  and  the  sheriffs  deputy  who  had 
obtained  Donald  Smith's  confession  laughed  loudly  and  jumped  with 
glee.  The  deputy  has  since  been  named  police  chief  in  Ayden. 

56 


Two 

The  teenager  was  sentenced  to  40  years  in  prison.  Notice  of  appeal  was 
filed  but  later  withdrawn  when  the  defense  attorney  received  a  sentence 
of  20  years  for  the  youth  in  return  for  agreement  never  to  again  appeal. 
On  the  day  that  Donald's  appeal  was  withdrawn,  10  other  teenage  boys 
also  pleaded  guilty.  With  no  evidence  against  them  except  forced  confes- 
sions, the  Ayden  11,  teenagers  all,  were  sentenced  to  a  total  of  133  years  in 
North  Carolina  prisons. 

Such  were  the  circumstances  in  which  Ben  Chavis  emerged  as  the 
leader  of  North  Carolina's  Black  youth  and  their  families  in  the  quest  for 
equal  education. 


By  September  of  1970,  Ben  was  really  into  his  work  as  the  commission 
for  Racial  Justice's  field  organizer.  Requests  for  help  from  Black  com- 
munities all  over  the  state  came  into  the  Commission  office  and  Ben  tried 
to  respond.  Even  after  his  Charlotte  and  Oxford  experiences,  he  was  to 
retain  "unbelievable"  and  "incredible"  in  his  lexicon,  testimony  to  the 
American  Dream.  He  would  be  going  into  town  after  town  to  organize 
with  his  eyes  wide  shut,  as  it  were. 

Black  parents  would  call  upon  the  Commission  to  help,  and  the 
Commission  would  call  upon  Ben.  Now  he  was  asked  to  come  to  the 
Nutbush  community,  a  Black  section  of  Vance  County,  four  miles  north 
of  Henderson,  the  county  seat,  about  20  minutes  drive  from  Oxford. 
Again,  schools  were  the  issue:  The  county  schools  had  just  been  desegreg- 
ated, resulting  in  the  busing  of  some  children  from  the  all-Black  Nutbush 
elementary  school  to  the  formerly  all-white  Middleburg  school,  crowd- 
ing the  classrooms  beyond  capacity.  The  board  of  education  refused  to 
provide  enough  mobile  units  to  hold  the  students,  using  the  resultant 
overcrowding  as  an  excuse  to  send  most  of  the  Black  students  back  to 
Nutbush.  Black  parents  felt  this  was  unfair:  Nutbush's  facilities  were 
terribly  inadequate,  and  if  students  were  going  to  be  moved  out  of 
Middleburg  and  back  to  Nutbush,  they  should  be  Black  and  white  alike. 
Hot  lunches  were  prepared  only  at  Middleburg,  then  driven  several  miles 
to  Nutbush  where  they  were  cold  upon  arrival. 

Ben's  first  act,  together  with  the  Rev.  Leon  White,  was  to  call  the 
parents  together  at  Oak  Level  United  Church  of  Christ  Church,  and  set 
up  a  rudimentary  organizational  structure — elect  a  president  and  secre- 
tary, have  minutes  taken  at  meetings,  develop  a  program,  in  this  case  how 
to  close  down  the  Nutbush  school  and  get  all  the  kids  back  over  to 
Middleburg.  Obviously  Nutbush  did  not  exist  in  a  vacuum.  Ben  went 

57 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

into  Henderson,  the  scene  of  his  childhood  memories  of  the  National 
Guard  violently  crushing  the  cotton-mill  workers'  strike.  Black  students 
in  the  Henderson  schools  also  had  problems  and,  with  Ben's  help,  joined 
the  Nutbush  community  in  organizing  a  Vance  County  United  Student 
Association.  The  association  drew  up  its  demands  for  equal  education 
and  presented  them  to  the  school  board.  When  no  response  was  forth- 
coming, they  decided  to  march. 

The  march  was  to  begin  at  the  all-Black  Kittrell  College  and  continue 
eight  miles  into  Henderson.  The  police  chief  and  city  manager  said  they 
would  march  only  "through  their  own  blood"  but  not  through  Vance 
County  and  Henderson.  The  association  asked  the  governor  for  protec- 
tion; its  members  were  determined  to  march,  despite  threats  from  on 
high.  Four  hundred  students  started  out  from  Kittrell  and  were  joined  by 
others  along  the  way.  Some  folks  came  up  from  Granville  County,  and 
by  the  time  they  approached  the  city  line  their  numbers  had  swelled  to 
2,500.  They  marched  along  a  state  highway,  and  when  the  highway  patrol 
showed  up  they  assumed  their  petition  to  the  governor  had  been  an- 
swered. But  the  patrolmen  were  asking  them  to  call  off  the  march,  to  get 
off  the  highway.  On  the  other  side  of  the  city  line,  the  Henderson  police 
had  gathered,  reinforced  by  the  cops  of  Oxford,  Franklinton,  Warrenton 
and  surrounding  communities.  They  blocked  the  highway  with  fire- 
trucks.  All  the  businesses  in  downtown  Henderson  were  boarded  up.  Car 
dealers  took  their  automobiles  off  the  lots  and  hid  them  out  of  fear  of 
broken  windows,  as  the  schoolchildren  and  clergy  approached  the  town. 
Police,  firetrucks  and  blockaded  highways  notwithstanding,  the  Vance 
County  United  Student  Association  was  going  to  march.  They  had 
already  gone  eight  miles  and  were  not  going  to  stop  now.  The  highway 
patrol,  seeing  their  determination,  pulled  rank  on  the  locals  and  per- 
suaded the  Henderson  police  to  allow  the  march  to  continue.  Numbers 
told  that  day,  thousands  of  marchers  and  only  scores  of  police. 

With  the  success  of  the  march,  the  association  organized  an  economic 
boycott  of  downtown  Henderson.  If  it  could  work  in  Oxford,  why  not 
here.  The  protest  movement  had  grown  from  tiny  rural  Nutbush  to  a 
county-wide  movement,  and  Henderson  became  the  center.  Association 
meetings  moved  to  the  Davis  Chapel  in  town.  One  night  they  met  to  plan 
a  march  on  the  courthouse  where  a  number  of  Black  students  were  on 
trial  for  fighting  whites  in  the  schools.  The  association  decided  to  fill  the 
courtroom.  When  the  judge  arrived  in  court  the  next  day  to  face  a  room 
full  of  Black  people,  he  called  Ben  back  to  his  chambers  and  wanted  an 
explanation.  "We  want  to  see  justice  done,"  said  the  young  organizer.  "I 
know  you're  going  to  turn  the  brothers  loose  'cause  they  didn't  do 

58 


Two 

anything  and  we  all  wanted  to  witness  this  justice."  The  judge  said  he 
wasn't  going  to  be  intimidated,  but  would  let  the  students  go  if  they 
marched  back  to  the  Black  community,  and  didn't  cause  a  disturbance 
downtown.  Ben  agreed  they'd  march  back  home  real  orderly.  But  the 
police  chief  argued  that  there  would  be  no  march  in  his  town,  not  after 
there  had  just  been  one  against  his  firm  determination  and  best  judg- 
ment. The  judge  decided  there  had  to  be  order  in  the  court,  and  the  order 
he  issued  the  police  chief  obeyed.  The  students  were  allowed  to  march 
back  home,  another  victory  in  hand. 

As  the  protests  gathered,  so  did  the  resistance.  State  police  tailed  Ben 
wherever  he  went  in  Vance  County.  One  evening  a  patrol  car  pulled  up 
behind  Ben  and  stopped  him.  The  cops  told  him  it  was  a  routine  check, 
they  just  wanted  to  see  his  license  and  registration  and  to  search  the  car. 
Ben  said  they  couldn't  search  his  car  without  a  warrant.  The  police  pulled 
out  their  billies  and  drew  their  revolvers — warrants  enough  in  Hender- 
son— and  asked  Ben  to  put  his  lights  on.  One  of  his  signal  lights  was 
faulty.  They  arrested  him,  took  his  car  keys,  searched  his  car,  took  him 
downtown,  booked  him  for  driving  with  only  one  signal  light,  and  set 
bond  for  $200.  Ben  refused  to  post  bond,  arguing  he  was  arrested  without 
cause.  The  association  began  to  demonstrate  at  the  jail,  and  a  Human 
Relations  Division  man  from  the  U.S.  Justice  Department,  aware  of  the 
tension  accumulating  in  Henderson,  decided  to  post  bond  for  Ben.  When 
the  case  was  brought  before  the  judge,  he  dismissed  the  charge  after  the 
police  testified  they  were  searching  the  car  for  weapons  but  found  none. 

The  association  planned  another  march  on  the  school  board.  Autumn 
was  turning  to  winter  and  the  first  frost  had  come  and  gone.  It  was 
growing  cold  and  marches  in  comfort  were  a  thing  for  a  season  past. 
Demonstrations  were  organized  without  permits  from  the  city,  which 
denied  each  request.  On  the  morning  of  a  march  on  the  school  board,  the 
town  newspaper  reported  that  the  county  had  acquired  a  pepper-fog 
machine  for  riot  control.  The  march  to  the  board  took  place  without 
incident,  but  as  the  students  headed  back  home,  a  line  of  police  with  gas- 
masks on  approached  them.  They  were  towing  a  strange  machine, 
billowing  white  smoke.  The  marchers  panicked  and  ran  back  to  the  Black 
community,  making  their  way  into  a  church.  Ben  began  to  lead  them  in 
singing  spirituals,  certain  in  their  knowledge  that  their  holy  surroundings 
would  be  off-limits  to  the  pepper-gas.  But  the  police  were  relentless;  tear- 
gas  canisters  were  thrown  through  the  windows  of  the  church.  Outside 
the  pepper-fog  machine  was  cranking  out  its  toxic  smoke.  Inside  the 
church,  the  demonstrators  lay  on  the  floor,  gasping  for  breath. 

The  community  reacted  with  anger.  A  struggle  ensued  to  wrest  the  gas 

59 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 


machine  away  from  the  police.  The  police  drew  their  guns  and  fired  some  [ 
warning  rounds.  Folks  in  the  neighborhood  headed  home  for  their  own 
protection.  In  the  melee,  an  88-year-old  Black  woman  who  lived  across 
the  street  from  the  church,  choked  to  death  from  the  tear-gas.  A  fireman 
was  found  dead,  fatally  wounded  by  his  own  pistol  according  to  the  next 
day's  paper.  A  tobacco  warehouse  across  the  street  from  the  Davis 
Chapel  went  up  in  smoke,  destroying  several  thousands  of  dollars  worth 
of  Bright  leaf.  Governor  Scott,  with  a  nose  for  property  rights,  sent  in  the 
National  Guard. 

It  took  a  few  days  for  the  air  to  clear  and  the  Guard  to  clear  out  and  by 
that  time  the  school  board  had  come  to  terms  with  the  demands  of  the 
association.  Save  one:  The  Nutbush  school  was  still  open  and  Black  kids 
in  that  community  were  still  coming  up  short.  The  superintendent  of 
public  education  was  holding  firm  on  that,  the  problem  that  initially 
brought  Ben  to  Vance  County.  It  was  marching  time  again,  this  time  with 
a  warning  from  the  association  that  the  marchers  were  going  into  the  ; 
school  board  building,  that  Nutbush  would  be  closed  and  the  kids  there 
sent  back  to  Middleburg,  or  hell  would  be  paid  before  the  demonstrators 
left  the  building. 

Agents  from  the  State  Bureau  of  Investigation  warned  of  arrests  if  they 
entered  the  school  board  building.  Ben's  reply  was  that  they'd  been 
struggling  for  over  a  month  to  close  Nutbush  and  the  struggle  had  been 
just,  they'd  take  their  chances  with  arrests.  One  SBI  man  asked  the 
demonstrators  to  give  him  a  few  minutes  alone  with  the  school  board 
chief,  and  entered  the  building.  Before  the  hour  was  up,  the  school 
superintendent  came  outside  and  announced  that  Nutbush  school  was 
closed  from  that  day  on. 


U  ntil  the  Nutbush  student  protest  came  along,  Henderson  had  been  a 
pretty  quiet  town  for  nearly  a  decade.  But  back  in  November  1958,  over  a 
thousand  members  of  the  Textile  Workers  Union  of  America  walked  out 
of  the  two  Harriet-Henderson  Cotton  Mills,  the  start  of  what  was  to 
become  one  of  the  longest — and  among  the  most  violent — industrial 
strikes  in  U.S.  labor  history.  Adopting  more  positions  than  the  Kama 
Sutra,  then  Governor  Luther  Hodges  called  the  Henderson  strike,  "a  blot 
on  North  Carolina,"  "the  most  difficult  single  problem  I  faced,"  "one 
strike  in  which  just  about  everybody  was  at  fault."7 

In  fact  the  Henderson  strike,  which  lasted  nearly  three  years,  saw  the 
entire  repressive  state  apparatus  used  to  break  the  union.  One  fifth  of  the 


60 


Two 


state's  police  forces  were  used  against  the  strike.  A  virtual  police  state  was 
established  by  injunction  and  enforced  by  the  highway  patrol  and 
National  Guard,  with  fixed  bayonets  and  with  authority  to  arrest 
arbitrarily,  given  to  them  by  a  special  act  of  the  state  legislature.  A 
superior  court  judge  ordered  in  the  Guard  to  prevent  mass  picketing. 
Soon  a  military  police  platoon  from  Greensboro  came  to  Henderson, 
followed  by  other  units,  all  of  the  2nd  Battle  Group  of  the  119th  Infantry 
of  the  30th  Division.8 

In  the  course  of  the  strike,  nearly  $300,000  in  bail  bonds  were  exacted 
from  almost  200  union  members,  arrested  on  at  best  flimsy  pretexts.  In 
addition,  the  state  sent  a  special  judge  and  special  prosecutor  to  hold  a 
special  court  in  which  union  members  and  their  sympathizers  were,  in 
almost  every  case,  sentenced  to  hard  labor  on  road-gangs  and  given 
heavy  fines. 

The  company  had  been  unionized  for  14  years;  union  recognition  was 
not  at  issue.  Rather  this  was  an  attempt  by  the  company  to  break  the 
contract  and  destroy  the  union.  At  contract  negotiations,  the  company 
tried  to  rewrite  and  void  every  clause  in  previously  held  union  contracts. 
When  the  union  voted  to  walk  out,  Governor  Hodges  ordered  150 
highway  patrolmen  to  Henderson.  The  town  and  the  whole  of  Vance 
County  quickly  became  "an  armed  camp,"  in  the  view  of  Boyd  Payton, 
Carolinas  director  of  the  union.9  Payton,  who  became  a  central  figure  in 
the  strike,  was  beaten  in  his  Henderson  motel  room  the  day  after  he 
arrived  in  town  to  help  out.  Some  40  instances  of  bombings  or  dynamit- 
ings  of  workers'  homes  and  neighborhoods  were  on  record  when  Gover- 
nor Hodges  sent  in  the  National  Guard — against  the  strikers.  Madness 
enveloped  the  company's  agents;  one  assistant  foreman  broke  his  leg 
when  he  plunged  from  an  upper-story  window  of  the  mills,  screaming, 
"They're  after  me,"  and  pointing  at  the  mill  where  only  other  supervisors 
and  strike-breakers  remained.  A  striker's  son,  home  on  leave  from  the 
army,  reached  the  injured  foreman  and  obtained  medical  help  for  the 
man.  A  few  hours  later,  that  same  striker's  son  was  wounded  by  a 
shotgun  blast  directed  by  another  supervisor. 

The  strike  quickly  became  a  lockout,  with  union  members  barred  from 
the  plant,  strike-breakers  brought  in  in  their  place,  the  first  real  test  of  the 
"right  to  work"  law  in  North  Carolina's  huge  textile  industry.  Between 
February  16  and  May  1, 1959,  to  take  at  random  ten  weeks  of  the  strike,  90 
cases  came  before  the  special  court  dealing  with  the  strike.  These 
included  7  strike-breakers  with  a  total  of  12  charges,  2  company  foremen 
with  4  charges,  and  29  union  members  with  a  total  of  74  charges.  The  7 
strike-breakers  were  found  "not  guilty"  on  8  of  the  12  counts,  2  other 

61 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

charges  were  declared  "non-suited,"  one  was  found  "guilty"  for  speeding, 
and  the  other  was  disposed  of  with  a  notation,  "pending  further  action." 
Of  the  two  foremen,  one  was  found  guilty  of  disorderly  conduct,  the 
other  of  assault  with  a  deadly  weapon,  but  the  records  for  both  show, 
"Sentence  to  be  given  later."  Of  the  29  union  members,  2  received  "not 
guilty"  verdicts,  the  rest  were  sentenced  to  numerous  fines  and  prison 
sentences  of  as  much  as  21  months  "on  the  roads." 

Not  one  strike-breaker  or  company  supervisor  in  the  course  of  the 
three-year  strike  was  ever  fined  or  given  a  jail  sentence. 10  Eight  top  union 
officers,  including  Boyd  Payton,  were  sentenced  to  9  and  10  years  in 
prison  on  charges  of  "conspiracy"  to  dynamite  a  textile  plant  and  a 
Carolina  Power  and  Light  sub-station.  Special  Judge  Raymond  Mallard 
kept  his  pledge  when  he  declared  in  court,  "If  you  want  to  be  sons  of 
bitches,  I  can  be  a  bigger  son  of  a  bitch  than  all  of  you  put  together."  The 
case  against  Payton  and  the  other  union  leaders — a  conspiracy  of  the 
oddest  sort,  some  of  the  "conspirators"  never  having  met  nor  talked  to 
one  another  until  the  trial— rested  on  the  testimony  of  a  tormented, 
alcoholic  informer  with  a  record  of  a  dozen  arrests  for  hit-and-run,  auto 
theft,  impersonating  a  policeman,  drunk-driving,  assault,  and  such.  This 
petty  criminal,  Harold  Aaron,  in  league  with  the  State  Bureau  of 
Investigation  which  held  a  handful  of  prosecutions  over  his  head,  was 
called  "the  bravest  man  I  know,"  by  the  state's  special  prosecutor.  The 
solicitor  compared  Aaron  ("a  brave  man  with  real  guts")  to  the  defen- 
dants ("low-bellied  cowards")  and  concluded  that  Aaron  was  an  "honest 
and  trustworthy  citizen  of  the  state  who  believed  in  preserving  law  and 
order  and  was  willing  to  expose  himself  to  great  danger  in  order  to 
protect  the  good  people  of  North  Carolina.""  The  sum  of  Aaron's 
testimony  was  that,  while  in  the  employ  of  the  SBI,  he  had  talked  on  the 
telephone  with  the  defendants  and  that  he  discerned  a  conspiracy. 

When  Boyd  Payton  and  his  co-defendants  were  well  into  their  prison 
terms  for  a  "dynamiting"  that  even  the  state  never  alleged  took  place,  it 
was  revealed  that  Aaron  received  at  least  $1,100  for  his  testimony.  The 
evidence  came  to  light  when  Aaron  was  arrested  in  Martinsville,  Vir- 
ginia, where  he  was  sharing  a  motel  room  with  a  17-year-old  high  school 
girl,  and  where  he  shot  another  man  who  refused  to  leave  the  room. 
Indicted  and  brought  to  trial,  Aaron  was  found  guilty  and  fined  only  $100 
for  this  aggravated  assault  and  attempted  murder.  The  sentencing  came 
after  secret  conferences  between  North  Carolina  and  Virginia  "criminal 
justice"  officials.12 

The  combination  of  company  manipulation  and  government  coercion 
left  the  Henderson  Cotton  Mill  workers  without  a  union,  unprotected 

62 


Two 


against  future  abuses.  Given  the  amount  of  resources  garnered  on  both 
sides,  the  outcome  of  so  many  months  of  sharpened  class  warfare  ending 
in  the  workers'  defeat  had  an  anaesthetic  effect  on  textile  organizing  in 
North  Carolina  which  has  not  yet  worked  off  completely. 


V  ictory  day  for  the  students  in  Henderson  in  1970  was  so  different 
from  the  weeks  that  preceded  it.  The  demonstrators  marched  back  to  the 
Davis  Chapel — no  teargas  on  this  march — to  celebrate.  But  first  they  met 
and  agreed  to  establish  a  permanent  community  organization,  the  Vance 
County  Improvement  Association,  which  still  carries  on  its  work.  Later 
that  evening  a  public  celebration  was  held  to  hail  the  latest  victory  and 
the  new  organization. 

In  the  audience  were  some  high  school  students  who  had  driven  over 
from  Warrenton  in  the  next  county.  They  said  that  they  too  were  having 
problems  in  the  schools  and  that  they  needed  help.  A  man  with  a  mission 
by  now,  Ben  Chavis  never  went  home  that  night,  but  left  the  celebration 
and  headed  directly  for  Warrenton  to  meet  with  the  students.  Their 
grievances  were  similar  to  those  of  the  students  in  Henderson  and  every 
other  town  in  North  Carolina.  Black  students  had  to  sit  in  the  back  of  the 
classrooms;  white  teachers  constantly  abused  them  with  racist  epithets; 
Black  girls  were  not  allowed  to  become  majorettes  with  the  school  band. 

The  protest  movement  in  Warrenton  was  patterned  on  that  of  Hender- 
son. Marches  on  the  school  board  met  with  no  results  in  the  beginning.  A 
school  boycott  was  called  and  the  school-bus  drivers,  in  some  cases 
parents  of  students,  refused  to  drive.  The  highway  patrol  was  called  out; 
police  cars  followed  Ben,  even  when  he  went  home  to  Oxford.  Black  high 
school  seniors  were  expelled,  but  Ben  helped  set  up  a  mechanism  to 
enroll  them  in  a  General  Education  Degree  program  at  Kittrell  College, 
where  they  finished  high  school  and  many  continued  on  to  also  complete 
college  studies.  The  Henderson  police  sent  their  pepper-fog  machine  to 
Warrenton,  as  a  symbol  of  fraternity  in  malice.  Frank  Ballance,  a  Black 
attorney  and  community  leader  in  the  town  and  a  friend  of  Ben's,  was 
beaten  up  in  the  street  by  some  Warrenton  cops. 

(At  the  age  of  16,  Alfreda  Jordan,  president  of  the  Warren  County 
Student  Association,  was  sent,  along  with  30  other  Black  female  stu- 
dents, to  Women's  Prison  in  Raleigh  for  two  days  as  punishment  for  their 
movement  activities.  When  she  finished  high  school  at  Kittrell  College, 
she  entered  Shaw  University  and  later  graduated  from  the  North  Car- 
olina Central  University  Law  School  in  Durham.  Had  it  been  left  to  the 


63 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

Warren  County  school  officials  Alfreda  Jordan  might  have  remained  at 
Women's  Prison.) 

What  was  happening  in  Warrenton  was  happening  throughout  North 
Carolina.  Ben  left  Warrenton  in  the  midst  of  its  struggle,  which  would  be 
protracted,  and  headed  for  Bladen  County  in  the  southeast  part  of  the 
state.  The  Warrenton  students  were  already  organized  and  leading 
themselves,  and  those  in  Bladen  County  were  asking  for  his  help. 

By  now  the  problems  were  familiar— racism  in  the  schools  growing  out 
of  the  court-ordered  desegregation.  The  rural  east  of  North  Carolina, 
which  engulfed  the  towns  Ben  was  organizing,  is  part  of  the  original 
Black  Belt  of  the  U.S.  South.  Industrialization  was  still  unfamiliar  for  the 
most  part.  Folks  here  were  farmers,  some  in  tobacco,  some  in  peanuts, 
but  farmers  all.  Forty  miles  from  the  Bladen  County  seat  of  Elizabeth- 
town  is  East  Arcadia,  a  virtually  all-Black  community.  The  authorities 
had  closed  down  the  elementary  and  junior  high  schools  in  East  Arcadia, 
compelling  the  students  to  go  to  school  in  Elizabethtown.  That  meant  an 
80-mile  round  trip  every  day.  The  highway  was  particularly  dangerous 
because  it  was  used  by  oil  tankers  supplying  the  state  from  Wilmington. 

The  day  after  Ben  arrived  in  Bladen  County,  he  took  some  of  the  East 
Arcadia  students  and  parents  with  him  to  meet  with  the  school  board  in 
Elizabethtown.  The  delegation  wanted  to  know  why  it  was  necessary  to 
close  down  the  East  Arcadia  schools,  and  asked  that  there  at  least  be 
parity,  with  some  white  students  being  bused  there  instead  of  the  planned 
one-way  busing.  The  board  refused  as  expected,  and  the  demonstrations 
began.  It  has  been  said  that  violence  is  as  American  as  frozen  foods,  and 
if  that  be  the  case,  Elizabethtown  is  an  All-American  city.  One  evening, 
in  response  to  the  student  demonstrations,  a  group  of  racist  thugs  drove 
out  to  a  Black  youth  club  on  the  outskirts  of  town  and  shot  eight  people. 
Four  of  them  died.  One  of  the  killers  was  a  department-store  owner 
whose  enterprise  was  destroyed  by  fire  the  next  day. 

Out  in  East  Arcadia,  the  high  school  continued  in  operation.  Only  the 
smaller  children  from  the  grammar  school  and  junior  high  were  bused  to 
Elizabethtown.  In  the  weeks  of  the  demonstrations  for  equity  in  busing, 
the  Bladen  County  sheriffs  received  a  bomb  threat  at  the  high  school.  A 
helicopter  with  demolition  experts  from  Fort  Bragg  was  flown  to  the 
school;  some  sticks  of  dymanite  were  found  in  the  cellar,  although  they 
were  not  wired  to  explode.  Nevertheless,  the  authorities  were  concerned 
enough  to  reopen  the  elementary  and  junior  high  schools  for  integrated 
classes  in  time  for  the  New  Year,  1971. 

While  Ben  was  working  in  East  Arcadia,  nearby  Wilmington  was 
beginning  a  long,  hot  winter.  Fights  were  breaking  out  in  the  high  schools 

64 


Two 

as  Black  students  moved  to  celebrate  Martin  Luther  King's  birthday, 
January  15,  in  the  schools.  Rev.  Eugene  Templeton,  the  white  pastor  of 
Gregory  Congregational  Church,  a  United  Church  of  Christ  affiliate  in 
Wilmington's  Black  community,  asked  the  Commission  for  Racial 
Justice  to  send  Ben  to  the  port  city. 

No  town  in  North  Carolina  summons  up  images  of  the  mint-julip-and- 
magnolia  anti-bellum  days  as  does  Wilmington.  Here  it  was  that  the  state 
militia  fired  100  guns  to  salute  the  withdrawal  of  South  Carolina  from  the 
Union  in  December  1860.  Wilmington  soon  became  the  center  of  the 
state's  secessionist  movement.  The  Red  Shirt  counterrevolution  of  1898, 
which  brought  the  violent  overthrow  of  the  democratic  Reconstruc- 
tionist  city  government  and  the  massacre  of  scores  of  Black  Wilmingto- 
nians,  is  recorded  for  posterity  as  the  town's  glory  days.  Once  named  an 
"All-American  City"  by  the  now  defunct  Look  magazine,  Wilmington's 
main  parks,  schools  and  historical  sites  are  named  for  the  Red  Shirt 
leadership.  Historical  markers  abound  in  this  city  of  azalea  festivals  and 
weeping-willow  gardens.  Recorded  here  are  such  precious  historical 
trivia  as  the  fact  that  Mary  Baker  Eddy  lived  in  a  house  in  town  for  part 
of  the  year  1844. 

The  city  fathers  are  not  totally  immersed  in  the  distant  past,  however. 
Once  the  state's  largest  city,  Wilmington  is  still  its  major  port.  Its 
importance  to  the  state's  economy  can  be  ascertained  from  the  fact  that 
each  year  it  handles  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  billion  pounds  of  leaf  tobacco, 
worth  more  than  $250  million  for  a  single  commodity.  In  recent  years 
major  industries  like  DuPont  Chemical,  General  Electric  and  Hercules 
Power  have  built  plants  with  total  investments  reaching  hundreds  of 
millions  of  dollars. 

Social  change  however  has  come  to  Wilmington  at  a  slower  pace  than 
economic  change.  In  1968,  following  the  murder  of  Martin  Luther  King, 
passions  surfaced  in  Wilmington  as  elsewhere.  Several  businesses  were 
destroyed  by  fire  and  the  National  Guard  was  sent  in.  Still,  the  power 
structure  remained  unresponsive  to  the  needs  of  the  Black  community. 
Blacks  occupied  nearly  all  of  the  city's  public  housing,  but  when  a 
vacancy  opened  on  the  housing  authority  in  1968,  another  white  was 
appointed  to  the  post.  A  few  weeks  later,  the  city  reopened  the  municipal 
incinerator,  located  in  the  heart  of  the  ghetto,  which  had  been  closed  as  a 
fire  and  health  hazard.  Some  voices  of  opposition  were  raised  but  it  was 
clear  that  individual  protests  could  be  absorbed  like  rain  on  an  ocean. 

In  1970,  the  housing  authority  refused  to  consider  the  request  of  Black 
residents  that  a  new  project  be  named  for  Dr.  King.  That  same  year,  a 
career  marine  at  Camp  Lejeune  named  Leroy  Gibson  left  the  corps,  after 

65 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

putting  in  his  20  years,  to  form  the  Rights  of  White  People  organization 
( ROWP).  The  ROWP  was  composed  primarily  of  ex-Marines  and  some 
active-duty  soldiers  as  a  paramilitary  unit  which  would  "do  the  job  the 
Klan  was  afraid  to  do,"  according  to  Gibson.  Based  in  nearby  Jackson- 
ville, off  base  from  Lejeune,  the  ROWP  made  frequent  forays  into 
Wilmington,  at  first  to  protest  the  hiring  of  Black  stevedores  on  the 
docks. 

Gibson,  who  is  considered  clinically  sane,  has  discussed  the  formation 
of  ROWP:  "The  marines  were  going  downhill.  They  started  giving 
Blacks  permission  to  use  the  Black-Power  salute  in  the  Corps.  This  is  a 
Communist  salute  to  start  with . . .  Blacks  were  on  a  rampage  throughout 
America  and  nobody  was  saying  anything  about  it.  So  1  said,  'What  we 
need  is  an  organization  to  meet  these  people  head  on'  .  .  .  You  can  no 
longer  give  in  to  these  revolutionaries  and  ever  expect  to  get  anything 
done.  You've  got  to  stop  them  .  .  .  Stop  all  this  rape,  robbery  and 
demands,  is  what  it  amounts  to  . .  .We  [ROWP]  strive  for  leadership,  for 

people  that  know  a  lot  about  firearms  Now  we've  put  together  sort  of 

a  leadership  council  of  12  organizations — the  Klan,  the  Renaissance 
party,  the  Minutemen,  you  name  it . . .  The  newspapers  don't  bother  me. 
As  long  as  they  don't  attack  us  openly,  I  can  live  with  it.  That's  their 
business,  that's  the  free  enterprise  system.  But  if  they  printed  an  article 
that  I  didn't  like,  and  it  wasn't  proven,  then  I'd  shoot  them."  (Interview 
with  author,  February  23,  1974.) 

As  usual  the  schools  were  central  to  the  racial  tension  that  gripped 
Wilmington.  That  semester,  city  police  beat  and  arrested  Black  students 
who  were  protesting  the  barring  of  Black  cheerleaders  at  the  newly 
desegregated  Hoggard  High.  At  New  Hanover  High,  a  similarly  peaceful 
protest  by  Blacks  was  broken  up  by  white  students  shouting  racial  slurs. 
Again,  city  police  armed  with  mace  entered  the  school  and  beat  Black 
students  with  blackjacks  while  letting  go  free  the  whites  who  provoked 
the  clash. 

Ben  Chavis  was  still  organizing  in  Bladen  County  late  that  fall  when 
fights  again  broke  out  in  the  Wilmington  schools.  Just  before  Christmas 
vacation,  17  Black  students  at  New  Hanover  High  were  suspended 
indefinitely  for  fighting  with  whites,  but  no  whites  were  suspended.  In 
response,  500  of  the  school's  700  Black  students  walked  out  of  school. 
The  boycott  continued  past  the  Christmas  vacation  into  January.  Then, 
in  late  January,  a  white  boy  assaulted  a  young  Black  girl  with  a  knife.  The 
New  Hanover  principal  suspended  the  victim  but  did  not  punish  the 
white  boy. 

Black  students  called  a  meeting  at  the  Gregory  Congregational  United 
66 


Two 

Church  of  Christ,  pastored  by  the  Rev.  Eugene  Templeton,  to  draw  up  a 
list  of  grievances  to  present  to  the  board  of  education.  The  list  included 
demands  for  no  suspension  of  students  without  stated  cause;  establish- 
ment of  a  Black  studies  program;  celebration  of  Martin  Luther  King's 
birthday  as  a  day  of  mourning;  agreement  of  the  New  Hanover  High 
principal  to  hear  the  Black  side  as  well  as  the  white  in  Black-white 
disputes;  agreement  of  the  principal  to  investigate  the  knife-assault  on 
the  Black  woman  student  by  the  white  student.  When  the  board  of 
education  chose  to  ignore  the  demands,  the  students  decided  to  call  a 
boycott  and  Rev.  Templeton  decided  to  ask  the  United  Church  of  Christ 
Commission  for  Racial  Justice  for  help.  The  commission  sent  Ben 
Chavis  to  Wilmington. 


William  Faulkner  once  said  of  the  continuum  of  history,  "The  past  is 
never  dead;  it  is  not  even  past."  So  it  is  (and  was)  with  the  New  South  of 
Wilmington— of  1898. 

Speaking  before  the  New  England  Society  of  New  York  in  1886,  Henry 
Grady,  editor  of  the  Atlanta  Constitution,  uttered  words  "that  subse- 
quent generations  of  Southern  schoolboys  would  be  required  to  commit 
to  memory.,,|3  Those  words  pronounced  the  end  of  the  Old  South  of 
slavery  and  the  beginning  of  a  New  South  of  freedom.  New  South 
visionaries  pinned  their  hopes  on  the  industrial  revolution  moving  in  a 
southerly  direction,  leaving  towns  in  its  wake  where  there  had  previously 
been  mere  villages.  With  the  white  whale  of  finance  capital  and  industry 
inside  smelling  distance,  the  New  South  mariners  pursued  their  prey 
without  relent. 

For  more  than  a  century  the  New  South  myth  has  been  perpetrated  at 
various  moments,  and  in  each  case  North  Carolina  has  been  put  forth  as 
the  prime  example  of  progressivism.  Most  often  this  image  of  North 
Carolina  results  from  its  heavy  industrialization  in  the  midst  of  tradi- 
tional rural  backwardness.  During  the  Civil  War,  North  Carolina  was 
the  only  state  in  the  Confederacy  to  clothe  its  own  troops,  for  example. 
And  after  the  Southern  defeat,  Northern  capital  moved  into  the  state  in  a 
big  way.  In  1880,  Northern  capital  investments  in  North  Carolina 
industry  amounted  to  $13  million;  by  the  turn  of  the  century  they  reached 
$76.5  million.  Between  the  end  of  the  war  and  1900,  the  state's  industry 
saw  its  capitalization  increase  six-fold,  its  industrial  workforce,  four- 
fold. The  bulk  of  this  influx  of  Northern  investment  came  after  the 
violent  overthrow  of  Reconstruction.  In  the  20-year  period  between  1880 

67 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

and  1900,  capitalization  of  the  state's  textile  industry  increased  on  an 
average  per  factory  from  less  than  $60,000  to  $186,000.  According  to 
Burlington  Industries,  "The  textile  industry  before  1900  was  based 
predominantly  on  local  enterprise,  local  capital,  local  management  and 
local  labor.  In  the  1890s  however,  there  was  a  notable  movement  of 
Northern  capital  into  the  state's  textile  interests  and  a  small  beginning  of 
the  exodus  of  Northern  mills  to  the  south."  Small  wonder:  Annual  wages 
then  averaged  $216  for  men,  $157  for  women  and  $103  for  children,  the 
latter  used  extensively.14 

The  story  of  Buck  Duke  and  his  tobacco  discovery  is  as  much  a  part  of 
North  Carolina  folklore,  and  is  told  to  children  at  least  as  often,  as  Ben 
Franklin's  kite-flying  and  Davey  Crockett's  death  at  the  Alamo.15  Seems 
that  when  the  first  shot  of  the  Civil  War  was  fired  at  Fort  Sumter,  a 
workable  method  of  curing  Bright  leaf  tobacco  had  been  perfected  in 
Caswell  County,  North  Carolina.  With  Richmond  on  the  front  lines  and 
its  plants  cut  off  from  new  supplies,  the  demand  for  good  southern 
tobacco  caused  a  number  of  manufacturers  to  set  up  shop  in  the  Old 
Bright  Belt  of  the  Tarheel  state.  When  the  war  was  over,  45-year-old 
Washington  Duke,  captured  at  Richmond,  imprisoned  and  freed  after 
Appomattox,  came  home  to  his  farm  outside  of  Durham  with  all  of  50 
cents  in  his  pocket.  War  had  stripped  his  300  acres  bare,  save  for  a  little 
Bright  tobacco  leaf.  Hitching  his  wagon  to  two  blind  mules,  Duke  and  his 
sons  hauled  their  tobacco  to  market,  where  the  tobacco  was  readily  sold. 

Old  Wash  Duke  discovered  that,  while  he  had  been  languishing  in 
prison,  some  80,000  Confederate  and  Union  troops  under  Joe  Johnson 
and  Sherman  were  awaiting  peace  terms  near  Durham.  They  discovered 
Caswell  County  Bright  leaf,  bought  it  out,  loved  it  so  much  they  yearned 
for  more.  When  the  soldiers  were  discharged  at  war's  end,  they  returned 
to  their  80,000  homes,  walking  advertisements  for  what  was  soon  to  be 
known  as  Bull  Durham. 

Sales  multiplied,  the  Dukes  moved  to  Durham,  and  the  youngest  son, 
James  Buchanan  "Buck"  Duke  took  over  the  manufacturing  end  of  the 
business.  Using  machines  from  Virginia  and  leaf  from  North  Carolina, 
Buck  went  to  market  in  New  York.  By  1889,  Duke  was  selling  more  than 
800  million  cigarettes  annually,  nearly  40  percent  of  all  U.S.  sales.  He 
formed  the  American  Tobacco  Company  in  1890,  and  by  the  turn  of  the 
century  had  a  capitalization  of  $25  million.  Duke  followed  the  premise  of 
his  contemporary,  Southern  Pacific  railroad  magnate  Collis  P.  Hunt- 
ington, who  held  that,  "Everything  that  isn't  nailed  down  is  mine,  and 
anything  I  can  pry  loose  isn't  nailed  down."  He  bought  up  Lorillard, 
Liggett  and  Meyers  of  St.  Louis,  Reynolds  and  several  lesser  companies. 

68 


Two 

"America  has  many  merchant  princes  and  captains  of  industry"  wrote 
Leslie's  Weekly  in  1906,  "but  only  three  industrial  kings:  John  D. 
Rockefeller  in  oil,  Andrew  Carnegie  in  steel,  and  James  B.  Duke  in 
tobacco." 

Buck  Duke  said  to  himself,  "If  John  D.  Rockefeller  can  do  what  he  is 
doing  for  oil,  why  should  not  I  do  it  in  tobacco."16  Textile  and  tobacco 
towns  grew  up  throughout  the  Carolina  Piedmont.  Greensboro,  popul- 
ated by  only  497  persons  in  1870,  had  more  than  10,000  at  the  turn  of  the 
century.  Winston  rose  from  443  to  10,000  in  the  same  period;  and 
Charlotte  from  4,473  to  18,091.  Durham,  unlisted  in  the  1870  census,  had 
6,679  by  1900.17  By  1880,  most  of  the  state's  126  tobacco  factories  were 
located  in  Durham  or  Winston.  Tobacco  was  regarded  as  a  strictly 
private  enterprise  or  a  family  affair.  And  though  the  families  were  named 
Duke  and  Reynolds,  the  labor  force  was  almost  exclusively  Black,  with 
an  average  per  capita  annual  wage  of  $136  at  the  opening  of  the  twentieth 
century.  As  Nelson  Rockefeller  was  to  remark  more  than  half-way  into 
that  century,  "The  chief  problem  of  the  low-income  farmers  is  poverty." 

Northern  investors  found  they  could  pick  up  a  nice  piece  of  change  in 
the  South,  especially  in  North  Carolina.  The  Arkwright  Club  of  New 
England,  under  the  direction  of  textile  manufacturers,  issued  a  report  in 
1897  which  delineated  the  South's  obvious  virtues:  cheap  labor,  longer 
hours  of  labor,  legislation  restricting  the  organization  of  trade  unions  but 
not  corporate  plunder.  The  report  estimated  that  Southern  labor  cost  40  • 
percent  less  than  in  New  England;  the  North  Carolina  work-day  was  24 
percent  longer  than  that  of  Massachussets.18  In  1906  the  average  work 
week  for  a  mill  hand  was  69  hours.  Tied  to  their  machines  day  and  night 
and  housed  in  mill-owned  shanty  villages,  the  developing  North  Carolina 
working  class  lived  an  existence  out  of  a  Dickens  nightmare. 

The  year  1900  saw  the  Carolina  Piedmont  shaken  by  labor  strikes  and 
lockouts  in  at  least  30  separate  mills.  Caesar  Cone,  whose  Cone  Mills  are 
today  the  country's  leading  manufacturer  of  denim,  closed  his  factory 
and  announced  he  would  tear  down  his  mill  before  submitting  to  a  union. 
He  soon  reopened  the  plant  with  non-union  labor  under  a  "yellow-dog" 
contract.  In  the  state's  textile  center,  Alamance  County,  which  had  also 
been  the  site  of  the  Klan's  most  violent  crusade,  17  mills  combined  to 
resist  a  strike  by  firing  every  union  member  and  evicting  them  from  the 
mill  villages.19 

That  the  initial  industrial  growth  of  North  Carolina  took  place  in 
tandem  with  the  Ku  Klux  salad  days  was  no  mere  coincidence.  The  Klan 
was  led  after  all  by  the  bankers  and  textile  barons  and  by  the  politicians 
and  clergy  that  did  their  bidding.  The  absolute  control  of  labor  depended 

69 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

on  the  establishment  of  white  supremacy.  If  white  workers  saw  their 
interests  in  common  with  white  industrialists  instead  of  with  Black 
workers,  their  fidelity  to  capitalism  was  secured.  Meantime,  those  whites 
who  resisted  felt  the  same  lash  wielded  against  Blacks.  20  In  the  years 
1889-1899,  nearly  a  third  of  the  lynch  victims  were  white.  The  Charlotte 
Observer,  which  has  been  through  the  years  a  sort  of  house  organ  for  the 
textile  industry,  hailed  on  June  27, 1900,  "the  struggle  of  the  white  people 
of  North  Carolina  to  rid  themselves  of  the  dangers  of  the  rule  of  Negroes 
and  the  lower  class  of  whites."21 

The  consolidation  of  democratic  gains  under  Reconstruction  had  to  be 
blocked,  the  new  political  realignment  subverted,  the  new  constitutional 
amendments  countermanded.  At  "the  peak  and  crown"  of  Reconstruc- 
tion, in  W.J.  Cash's  words,  62  Blacks  held  public  office  in  North 
Carolina's  Craven  County.  In  more  than  50  counties  in  the  state,  Black 
magistrates  "sat  in  judgment  on  white  men — and,  as  the  orators  did  not 
fail  to  note,  white  women."  Blacks  debated  in  the  state  legislature,  and 
one  Black  man  was  a  member  of  the  Tarheel  congressional  delegation  in 
Washington.22 

To  reverse  this  situation  required  the  violent  overthrow  of  the  demo- 
cratically-elected government,  the  first  in  the  state's  history.  A  climate  of 
fear  and  hatred  was  created.  Racism  was  combined  with  sadism  in 
defense  of  the  old  order  to  produce  the  same  kinds  of  results  that  in  the 
next  century  became  commonplace  under  the  Third  Reich.  Cash  wrote, 

From  the  1880's  on  . . .  there  appears  a  waning  inclination  to  abandon  such 
relatively  mild  and  decent  ways  of  dispatching  the  mob's  victim  as  hanging 
and  shooting  in  favor  of  burning,  often  of  roasting  over  slow  fires,  after 
preliminary  mutilations  and  tortures — a  disposition  to  revel  in  the  infliction 
of  the  most  devilish  and  prolonged  agonies.  .  .  . 

The  growing  lads  of  the  country,  reflecting  prevailing  sentiment  in  naked 
simplicity,  and  quick  to  see  that  the  man  who  was  pointed  out  as  having  slain 
five  or  eight  or  13  Negroes  .  . .  still  walked  about  free,  quick  to  penetrate  the 
expressions  of  disapproval  which  might  accompany  the  recital  of  his  deeds,  to 
evaluate  the  chuckles  with  which  such  recitals  were  too  often  larded,  to  detect 
the  hidden  note  of  pride  and  admiration — these  lads  inevitably  tended  to  see 
such  a  scoundrel  very  much  as  he  saw  himself:  as  a  gorgeous  beau  sabreur, 
hardly  less  splendid  than  the  most  magnificent  cavalry  captain.23 

The  overthrow  of  Reconstruction  was  completed  with  the  violent 
counterrevolution  in  Wilmington,  the  largest  city  in  North  Carolina  at 
the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Wilmington  had  been  the  most 
important  Confederate  seaport  in  the  upper  South.  Here  an  elaborate 

70 


Two 


system  of  forts  had  been  constructed  by  Black  slaves  and  the  forced  labor 
of  Indian  workers,  kidnapped  and  taken  from  nearby  Robeson  County 
by  the  Confederate  Home  Guards  to  work  and  die  in  the  pest  holes  of 
New  Hanover  County.24  With  the  post-war  industrial  development,  the 
port  city  became  vital  to  the  state's  burgeoning  economy  as  a  shipping 
outlet. 

From  1870  to  the  present,  the  Democratic  Party  has  had  majority 
representation  in  the  North  Carolina  legislature  with  one  brief,  excep- 
tional interlude— the  years  1895-1901,  commonly  known  as  the  Fusion 
period.  The  Fusionists  were  those  who  combined  the  Republican  Party 
with  the  Populists  to  defeat  the  Democrats.  The  Fusionist  effort  finally 
met  defeat  with  the  forceful  overthrow  of  the  government  by  the 
Democrats.  That  putsch  was  centered  in  Wilmington.25  The  virtual 
dictatorship  of  the  Democrats  came  into  power  using  the  false  issue  of 
"Negro  domination,"  not  alone  to  establish  a  one-party  system  in  North 
Carolina,  but  to  do  so  on  behalf  of  the  emerging  industrial  and  commer- 
cial forces  in  the  state. 

"The  industrial  growth  of  North  Carolina  in  the  1880's  and  1890V 
wrote  a  leading  scholar  of  the  period,  "was  reflected  in  the  growth  of  the 
Democratic  party  into  whose  ranks  came  many  lawyers,  textile  mill 
owners  and  railroad  magnates.  While  the  leadership  of  the  party  was  not 
captured  by  the  industrial  or  capitalistic  element  until  the  1890's,  its 
presence  gave  the  party  in  the  1880's  a  'pro-corporation'  attitude  which 
was  further  enhanced  by  'machine  politics.'"26  In  the  1890s,  North 
Carolina  was  in  the  midst  of  tremendous  industrial  growth.  Invested 
capital  in  manufacturing  had  increased  from  $13  million  in  1880  to  $76.5 
million  in  1900;  the  value  of  manufactured  goods  from  $20  million  to  $95 
million.  The  furniture  industry,  for  example,  increased  from  6  factories 
making  $159,000  worth  of  products  to  44  factories  making  $1.5  million  in 
the  1890s  alone.  Textile  mills  increased  four  times  over,  invested  capital 
twelvefold,  value  of  products  elevenfold,  and  number  of  workers  nine 
times  over  between  1880  and  1900.  "The  industrial  magnates  and  railroad 
financiers  who  managed  these  aggregate  capitalistic  enterprises  were 
members  and  beneficiaries  of  the  Democratic  party."27 

Capitalist  industry  is  by  its  nature  undemocratic:  Owners  set  goals, 
managers  and  their  foremen  drive  the  workforce  to  produce  those  goals, 
the  workers  themselves  are  not  consulted.  If  the  workers  should  protest, 
they  are  fired.  This  set  of  power  relations  held  even  more  true  in  the 
milltowns  of  North  Carolina  than  elsewhere,  as  the  mills  owned  the 
towns  and  the  houses  in  which  the  workers  lived.  That  "dictatorship  of 
the  bourgeoisie"  which  characterized  North  Carolina  industry,  also 

71 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

characterized  North  Carolina  government  when  the  bourgeoisie  took 

state  power. 

In  Wilmington  today  tribute  is  still  paid  in  varied  forms  to  the 
"founding  father  of  modern  Wilmington,"  Hugh  McRae.  McRae  be- 
came president  of  the  Wilmington  Cotton  Mills  in  1895.  Five  years  later, 
with  the  destruction  of  the  Fusion  effort,  he  was  named  president  of  the 
Wilmington  Gas  Light  Company,  in  which  position  he  was  able  to 
consolidate  the  railways,  mills  and  light  and  power  facilities  of  the 
coastal  capital.  The  Tide  Water  Power  Company,  a  forerunner  of  today's 
Carolina  Power  and  Light,  was  formed  a  few  years  later  under  McRae,  in 
cooperation  with  representatives  of  all  the  major  banks  in  the  area.28 
Such  rapid  consolidation  of  financial  and  industrial  power  and  its 
consequential  control  over  government  was  enabled  to  take  hold,  in  large 
measure  because  of  the  demolition  of  the  democratic  features  of  Recon- 
struction, most  especially  the  voting  rights  of  Black  people.  The  brutal 
events  in  Wilmington  at  the  turn  of  the  century  were  the  culmination  of 
that  demolition.  Not  that  disenfranchisement  would  be  limited  to  Blacks. 
One  of  McRae' s  contemporaries,  Charles  Aycock,  who  became  governor 
of  North  Carolina  in  the  years  after  the  defeat  of  the  Fusionists,  led  the 
statewide  campaign  for  disenfranchisement.  Although  Aycock  repeat- 
edly assured  whites  that  they  would  retain  the  vote,  it  soon  became 
apparent  that  leaders  of  the  movement  "saw  in  it  an  opportunity  to 
establish  in  power'the  intelligence  and  wealth  of  the  South,'  which  would 
of  course  'govern  in  the  interest  of  all  classes."'29 

The  disenfranchisement  campaign  centered  around  an  appeal  to  racist 
fears  of  "Negro  domination."  The  campaign's  success  rested  on  its  ability 
to  awaken  that  particular  sleeping  dog.  Actually  only  one  member  of 
North  Carolina's  congressional  delegation  to  Washington  in  those  years, 
George  H.  White,  was  Black,  hardly  a  "dominating"  ratio.  In  addition  to 
Rep.  White,  the  customs  collector  in  Wilmington's  port,  John  C.  Dancy, 
was  Black.  A  Black  postmaster,  S.  H.  Vick,  served  in  Wilson,  and  a  Black 
deputy  revenue  collector,  Dr.  James  E.  Shepard,  worked  in  Raleigh.  In 
addition  to  these  federal  posts  occupied  by  Black  men,  there  were  four 
Black  representatives  in  the  state  legislature  and  several  in  county 
positions — registrars  of  deeds,  deputy  sheriffs,  coroners  and  justices  of 
the  peace— primarily  in  the  Black  Beit  areas.  Dozens  of  city  aldermen 
across  the  state  were  Black.  In  the  Wilmington  of  1897,  three  Black 
aldermen  served  on  the  city  board,  representing  the  Fusion  ticket.30 

Nevertheless,  in  May  1898,  the  state  Democratic  convention  adopted  a 
platform  which  pledged  the  abolition  of  "Negro  domination,"  and 
promised  "rule  by  the  white  men  of  the  state."31  As  the  Democrats 

72 


Two 

charted  the  path  to  white  supremacy,  their  press  marched  to  the  beat  of  a 
crazed  drummer.  The  News  and  Observer  of  Raleigh  carried  stories 
during  the  Fall  election  campaign  under  the  following  headlines:  "Negro 
Control  in  Wilmington,"  "Unbridled  Lawlessness  on  the  Streets," 
"Greenville  Negroized,"  "The  Negro  in  Power  in  New  Hanover,"  "Flag- 
man Caught  Negro  Convict,"  "Tried  to  Register  an  Idiot,"  "Chicken 
Under  His  Arm,"  "Black  Radical  Convention  Wants  to  Send  Delegate  to 
Congress,"  "Arrested  by  a  Negro:  He  Was  Making  No  Resistance,"  "A 
Negro  Insulted  the  Post  Mistress  Because  He  Did  Not  Get  a  Letter," 
"Negroism  in  Lenoir  County,"  "Negro  on  Train  With  Big  Feet  Behind 
White,"  "Is  a  Race  Clash  Unavoidable?"  and  on  and  on  and  on.  The 
paper's  cartoons  followed  the  same  dubious  star.  The  Black  legislator, 
James  H.  Young,  was  depicted  inspecting  the  living  quarters  of  fright- 
ened white  women.  Other  cartoons  showed  a  big  black  foot  with  a  white 
man  pinned  underneath,  with  the  caption,  "How  Long  Will  This  Last?"; 
a  Black  man  hit  on  the  arm  by  a  sledge  marked  "Honest  White  Man," 
captioned  "Get  Back,  We  Will  Not  Stand  It";  a  body  drowning  at  sea 
with  a  hand  inscribed  "North  Carolina"  reaching  out  of  the  water, 
captioned  "White  Man  to  Rescue";  a  Black  road  overseer  ordering 
whites  to  work  on  the  chain  gangs;  a  bat  with  claws  and  "Negro  rule" 
written  on  its  wings,  with  white  men  and  women  under  the  claws, 
captioned  "The  Vampire  that  Hovers  Over  North  Carolina."32 

The  Democrat  Aycock's  gubernatorial  campaign  managers  held 
"White  Supremacy  Jubilees,"  in  which  paraded  hundreds  of  red-shirted 
men  bearing  arms.  Sympathizers  in  Virginia  shipped  50,000  rounds  of 
ammunition  and  a  carload  of  firearms  in  the  week  preceding  the  elec- 
tion.33 The  gun-toting  Red  Shirts  performed  much  the  same  tasks  as  the 
Klan — intimidation  of  whites  and  Blacks  and,  on  more  than  a  few 
occasions,  murder  of  Blacks — and  had  a  similar  composition.  One 
historian  of  the  period  described  the  Red  Shirts  as  made  up  "in  the  main 
of  respectable  and  well-to-do  farmers,  bankers,  school  teachers-  and 
merchants — in  many  cases  the  best  men  in  the  community."34  These 
pillars  of  community  virtue,  bearing  arms,  broke  up  political  meetings, 
fired  on  citizens  in  their  homes,  kidnapped  and  whipped  political 
opponents  as  they  carried  out  God's  work  in  the  coastal  plains  of  North 
Carolina. 

Days  before  the  election,  the  Democrats  held  their  final  campaign  rally 
at  Goldsboro  to  which  all  who  wanted  to  attend  were  granted  free 
transportation  by  the  state's  railroads.  They  issued  a  proclamation  on 
that  October  28,  declaring  that  the  sanctity  of  white  womanhood  was 
endangered  and  property  rendered  less  valuable,  and  that  white  men 

73 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

would  rule  North  Carolina  because  they  must.  The  Charlotte  Observer,  a 
newspaper  partisan  to  the  Democrats,  later  wrote:  "...  the  businessmen 
of  the  State  are  largely  responsible  for  the  victory.  Not  before  in  years 
have  the  bank  men,  the  millmen  and  the  businessmen  in  general — the 
backbone  of  the  property  interests  of  the  State — taken  such  sincere 
interest.  They  worked  from  start  to  finish  and  furthermore  they  spent 
large  bits  of  money  in  behalf  of  the  cause.  . . .  When  Democratic  rallies 
were  held,  mills  and  shops  were  shut  down  so  that  the  operatives  could 
attend  the  speakings.  Indeed  North  Carolina  is  fast  changing  from  an 
agricultural  to  a  manufacturing  state."35 

The  Democratic  campaign  was  aimed  at  Wilmington  in  the  first  place, 
with  its  Fusion  government  including  three  Black  aldermen  out  of  ten,  a 
Black  county  treasurer  in  New  Hanover,  a  Black  assistant  sheriff,  a  Black 
coroner  and  a  Black  port  collector.  One  of  the  city  fathers  and  chairman 
of  the  city  Democratic  Party,  a  racist  out  of  central  casting  named  Alfred 
M.  Waddell,  had  declared  during  the  campaign,  "We  in  Wilmington 
extend  a  Macedonian  call  to  you  to  come  over  and  help  us.  We  will  not 
live  under  these  intolerable  conditions.  No  society  can  stand  it.  We 
intend  to  change  it,  if  we  have  to  choke  the  current  of  Cape  Fear  River 
with  Negro  carcasses."36  Waddell  was  a  member  of  a  Democratic 
committee  known  as  the  "Secret  Nine,"  which  drafted  the  "Declaration 
of  White  Independence"  charting  the  course  of  Wilmington  after  the 
Democratic  victory.  Among  its  proclamations  were  that  the  undersigned 
would  no  longer  be  ruled  by  Blacks,  "an  inferior  race,  not  anticipated  by 
the  U.S.  Constitution";  that  whites  in  Wilmington  would  no  longer  pay 
taxes  levied  by  Blacks  and  Republicans;  that  whites  were  the  most 
advanced  group  in  society.  Viewing  Reconstruction  democracy  as  a 
prospect  about  as  pleasant  to  contemplate  as  hemophilia,  the  Secret  Nine 
gave  the  Black  Fusionist  newspaper,  The  Wilmington  Record,  24  hours 
to  cease  publication  and  its  editor  the  same  time  to  get  out  of  town. 

On  November  10,  exactly  half  an  hour  after  the  warning  time  had 
expired,  Waddell  led  bands  of  Red  Shirts  in  a  raid  on  the  Wilmington 
Light  Infantry  Armory.  The  vigilantes  armed  themselves,  proceeded  to 
the  office  of  the  Record  and  burned  it  to  the  ground.  From  there  they  set 
out  for  Wilmington's  Black  community  where  they  conducted  a  virtual 
pogrom.  The  most  complete  study  of  the  Wilmington  massacre  sum- 
marized the  events  thusly: 

Streets  were  dotted  with  dead  bodies,  some  of  which  were  lying  in  the  street 
until  the  day  following  the  riot,  others  of  which  were  discovered  later  under 
houses  by  their  stench;  colored  men  who  passed  through  the  streets  had  either 
to  be  guarded  by  one  of  the  crowd  or  have  a  written  permit  giving  them  the 


74 


Two 


right  to  pass;  little  white  boys  searched  Negroes  and  took  from  them  every 
means  of  defense,  and,  if  the  Negroes  resisted,  they  were  shot  down  by  armed 
white  males  who  looked  on  with  shotguns;  rioters  went  from  house  to  house 
looking  for  Negroes  whom  they  considered  offensive  and  killed  them,  and 
poured  volleys  into  fleeing  Negroes  like  sportsmen  firing  at  rabbits  in  an  open 
field;  Negro  churches  were  entered  at  the  point  of  a  cannon  and  searched  for 
ammunition;  and  white  ministers  carried  guns.37 

When  the  carnage  was  over,  the  Cape  Fear,  true  to  Waddell's  pledge, 
was  choked  with  hundreds  of  Black  bodies.  Not  one  white  man  was 
arrested  of  course.  Quite  the  contrary:  Waddell  and  other  Democratic 
leaders  marched  to  the  city  hall  in  the  wake  of  the  riot,  forced  the 
Fusionists  to  resign,  and  appointed  themselves  to  office.  The  News  and 
Observer  hailed  the  massacre  as  imperative  to  save  the  city  from  degrada- 
tion. The  Wilmington  Messenger  praised  the  coup  d'etat  as  an  heroic  act 
in  liberating  whites  from  Black  tyranny. 

Few  survivors  of  the  Wilmington  massacre  were  able  to  record  their 
accounts  of  the  brutality.  One,  the  Rev.  Charles  S.  Morris,  left  the  city 
and  moved  to  Boston.  Still  a  refugee  in  1899,  he  told  a  Boston  audience: 

. . .  One  man,  brave  enough  to  fight  against  such  odds  would  be  hailed  as  a 
hero  anywhere  else,  was  given  the  privilege  of  running  the  gauntlet  up  a  broad 
street,  where  he  sank  ankle  deep  in  the  sand,  while  crowds  of  men  lined  the 
sidewalks  and  riddled  him  with  a  pint  of  bullets  as  he  ran  bleeding  past  their 
doors;  another  Negro  shot  20  times  in  the  back  as  he  scrambled  empty-handed 
over  a  fence;  thousands  of  women  and  children  fleeing  in  terror  from  their 
humble  homes  in  the  darkness  of  the  night,  out  under  a  gray  and  angry  sky, 
from  which  falls  a  cold  and  bone-chilling  rain,  out  to  the  dark  and  tangled 
ooze  of  the  swamp  amid  the  crawling  things  of  night,  fearing  to  light  a  fire, 
startled  at  every  footstep,  cowering,  shivering,  shuddering,  trembling,  braving 
in  gloom  and  terror:  half-clad  and  bare-footed  mothers,  with  their  babies 
wrapped  only  in  a  shawl,  whimpering  with  cold  and  hunger  at  their  icy 
breasts,  crouched  in  terror  from  the  vengeance  of  those  who,  in  the  name  of 
civilization,  and  with  the  benediction  of  the  ministers  of  the  Prince  of  Peace, 
inaugurated  the  reformation  of  the  city  of  Wilmington. . . .  All  this  happened, 
not  in  Turkey,  nor  in  Russia,  nor  in  Spain,  not  in  the  gardens  of  Nero,  nor  in 
the  dungeons  of  Torquemada,  but  within  300  miles  of  the  White  House,  in  the 
best  state  in  the  South,  within  a  year  of  the  20th  century,  while  the  nation  was 
on  its  knees  thanking  God  for  having  enabled  it  to  break  the  Spanish  yoke 
from  the  neck  of  Cuba.  This  is  our  civilization.  .  .  ,38 

The  Wilmington  massacre  closed  out  the  nineteenth  century  and  set 
the  tone  for  twentieth  century  life  in  North  Carolina. 

75 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

Ben  arrived  in  Wilmington  on  the  morning  of  February  1, 1971.  He  had 
just  gone  home  for  a  family  visit  in  Oxford  from  Elizabethtown  when 
Rev.  Templeton's  call  came.  Events  were  pressing  and  he  had  to  come 
down  to  Wilmington,  Ben  was  told.  He  arrived  in  the  port  city  a  little 
after  midnight  and  went  directly  to  Rev.  Templeton's  home,  next  door  to 
the  Gregory  Congregational  Church.  The  minister  explained  to  his  guest 
that  he  had  opened  up  the  church  to  the  students  for  their  meetings 
because  their  cause  was  just,  he  felt,  but  being  white,  he  really  couldn't 
provide  leadership  to  them  in  the  struggle.  He  would  be  supportive  but 
thought  it  best  not  to  be  in  the  forefront.  Rev.  Templeton  wanted  to 
know  how  long  Ben  could  stay  in  Wilmington.  Based  on  his  recent 
experiences  in  Henderson,  Warrenton  and  East  Arcadia,  Ben  was  con- 
vinced it  wouldn't  be  necessary  to  stay  for  very  long.  He  would  meet  with 
the  students  in  the  morning,  ascertain  the  problem,  try  to  head  them  in 
the  right  direction,  and  return  to  Oxford,  to  remain  on  call  if  new 
difficulties  emerged. 

Early  the  next  day,  a  few  of  the  students  came  to  Rev.  Templeton's 
house.  There  had  been  no  student  organization,  but  an  informal  leader- 
ship had  developed  out  of  the  student  protests.  Steve  Mitchell,  a  high 
school  senior,  seemed  to  be  the  most  articulate  of  this  budding  leader- 
ship, and  he  convened  the  meeting  that  morning.  They  decided  to 
generalize  their  demands,  to  embrace  all  the  Wilmington  schools.  The 
new  demands  included:  a  cessation  of  physical  attacks  by  white  teachers 
against  Black  students;  recognition  of  Martin  Luther  King's  birthday  as 
a  school  holiday;  establishment  of  Black  studies  programs;  an  end  to  the 
practice  in  some  classes  of  making  Black  students  sit  in  the  back  of  the 
room;  agreement  that  Blacks  be  allowed  the  same  equipment  in  business 
courses  as  whites  (white  teachers  expressed  fear  that  Blacks  would  break 
the  IBM  typewriters  or  were  unable  to  type  correctly  because  "their 
fingers  are  too  big.") 

The  students  at  Rev.  Templeton's  house  constituted  themselves  a 
committee  to  deliver  the  demands  to  the  school  board  that  same  after- 
noon. They  gave  the  board  until  noon  the  next  day,  Wednesday,  to  chew 
over  that  particular  bone.  To  back  up  their  demands,  the  students  agreed 
that  they  would  walk  out  of  school  at  the  sound  of  the  lunch  bells  on 
Wednesday  and  head  for  the  Gregory  Congregational  Church.  Students 
from  all  of  the  city  schools  were  notified  of  the  plan,  including  those  at 
J.T.  Hoggart  High  School  in  the  suburbs.  Drivers  at  the  Black  bus 
company  in  Wilmington  volunteered  to  pick  up  the  Hoggart  students 
and  take  them  to  the  church  to  pray  for  the  school  board. 

76 


Two 

Exactly  at  noon,  400  Black  students  at  New  Hanover  High  walked  off 
the  school  grounds  and  headed  for  the  church.  Over  300  of  their  mates  at 
Williston  Junior  High  joined  in.  Little  first  graders  at  the  grammar 
schools  put  away  their  books  and  trooped  into  the  streets.  Folks  on  the 
street  scratched  their  heads  in  wonderment.  It  appeared  to  be  a  fire  drill, 
nice  and  orderly,  but  this  wasn't  possible,  not  a  simultaneous  drill  for  all 
the  schools.  About  that  time  busloads  of  Hoggart  students  from  out  in 
the  county  began  to  arrive  at  the  church.  After  the  church  rally,  more 
than  a  thousand  students  marched  on  the  board  of  education  to  press 
their  demands.  Police  were  there  with  riot  equipment  and  paddy  wagons 
but  the  school  board  was  gone.  The  students  agreed  to  continue  their 
boycott  of  school  until  they  received  some  satisfaction. 

A  meeting  was  called  for  that  night  at  Gregory  Congregational.  By 
now  Holy  War  had  been  declared  against  Ben  Chavis  and  Rev.  Tem- 
pleton.  Ben  was  dubbed  an  "outside  agitator,"  an  apparent  miracle 
worker  who  had  disrupted  the  schools  within  36  hours  of  his  arrival  in 
Wilmington.  City  officials  called  Templeton  to  say  he  shouldn't  allow  the 
meeting.  Less  official  callers  bearing  essentially  the  same  message  let  the 
white  minister  know  that  his  church  would  be  blown  up,  his  wife  killed 
and  himself  run  out  of  town  if  he  continued  to  let  the  church  serve  as  the 
boycott  center.  Rev.  Leon  White,  state  director  of  the  Commission  for 
Racial  Justice,  ordered  Ben  to  return  to  Oxford. 

But  the  next  morning  Ben  was  awakened  in  Oxford  by  another  phone 
call  from  Rev.  White  saying  things  had  changed,  fires  had  been  set  the 
night  before  in  Wilmington,  and  the  North  Carolina  Good  Neighbor 
Council— statewide  racial  trouble  shooters  appointed  by  the  governor — 
had  asked  White  to  let  Ben  return  to  the  port  city  because  he  seemed  to  be 
the  only  one  who  could  control  the  students.  Wilmington  is  about  160 
miles  southeast  of  Oxford,  and  Ben  now  drove  the  distance  for  the  fourth 
time  in  less  than  two  days. 

Wilmington  had  changed  in  the  few  hours  of  his  absence.  The  Klan 
had  brought  in  members  from  enclaves  in  Burgaw  and  Whiteville.  Rev. 
Templeton  was  still  receiving  bomb  threats  and  even  the  Good  Neighbor 
Council  was  saying  the  threats  were  for  real.  The  council  welcomed  Ben 
back  to  town,  saying  they  hoped  he  would  be  able  to  keep  things  orderly. 
But  the  burden  was  on  the  school  board  to  grant  the  students'  demands, 
and  on  the  authorities  to  keep  the  peace. 

Another  meeting  was  called  for  the  church  that  night,  Thursday. 
Again  the  bomb  threats  came.  The  students  decided  that  they  would 
protect  the  church  with  their  bodies  by  remaining  inside,  hostages  to  the 
potential  violence  of  racist  fanatics.  Pickup  trucks  filled  with  whites 

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Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

wearing  cowboy  hats  and  packing  guns  arrived  in  town  from  Pender 
County  and  from  across  the  South  Carolina  state  line. 

Shortly  after  the  meeting  started  at  the  church  a  volley  of  shots  came 
through  the  window.  The  students  crouched  on  the  floor  and  the  lights 
were  cut.  Ben  asked  that  the  lights  be  turned  back  on.  He  said  that  he  was 
going  to  stay  in  the  church  that  night  and  invited  the  students  and  their 
supporters  to  join  him  if  they  wished.  The  students  decided  to  stay.  Rev. 
Templeton  went  home  to  join  his  wife.  By  now  Jim  Grant  had  come  in 
from  Charlotte  to  offer  assistance  to  Ben.  Again  Jim  was  to  play  the 
familiar  role  of  "faculty  advisor." 

Shots  rang  out  in  the  community  all  night.  For  the  most  part  they 
missed  the  church,  fired  as  they  were  from  speeding  trucks.  Some  bullets 
went  into  nearby  homes.  Two  people  were  wounded  and  were  tended  to 
by  Mrs.  Templeton,  a  registered  nurse  who  had  been  fired  by  the  city 
hospital  earlier  that  day  because  of  her  husband's  activities  at  the  church. 

When  dawn  arrived  Friday,  Ben  and  the  students  learned  that  there 
had  been  sporadic  gunfire  that  night  in  other  parts  of  Wilmington.  Every 
indication  promised  worse  to  come  if  the  city  did  not  act.  Ben  and  the 
students  went  through  the  neighborhood  organizing  an  impromptu 
march  on  City  Hall  to  demand  a  curfew  before  madness  completely 
engulfed  Wilmington.  Mayor  Crowmonty,  a  direct  descendant  of  the 
attorney  general  of  the  Confederacy,  refused  to  meet  with  the  students. 
The  requested  curfew  was  denied. 

As  night  approached  so  did  the  nightriders.  Carloads  of  armed  whites 
cruised  Wilmington's  Black  community,  testing  its  defenses.  When  its 
defenselessness  became  apparent,  the  whites  became  bolder,  shooting  at 
folks  on  the  street  from  their  speeding  cars.  A  block  away  from  the 
church,  one  man  was  felled  by  shots  in  the  legs.  After  that  the  students  set 
up  roadblocks.  Trash  cans,  benches,  anything  to  block  the  streets,  even 
pews  from  the  church,  were  used  to  build  barricades.  By  this  time  the 
community  was  moved  to  act  in  self-defense.  Old  hunting  rifles  were 
brought  out  of  musty  closets  and  cleaned.  Inside  the  church  the  Black 
students  were  joined  by  some  of  their  sympathetic  white  classmates. 
Other  adults  joined  in,  including  Ann  Sheppard,  a  white  volunteer  from 
the  Good  Neighbor  Council  and  mother  of  three,  and  Molly  Hicks,  the 
Black  chairperson  of  the  parents'  support  group  for  the  student  boycott. 

A  command  post  was  set  up  and  foot  patrols  with  walkie-talkies  cased 
the  neighborhood  around  the  church.  More  rounds  of  fire  were  shot,  but 
what  had  been  shotgun  pellets  the  night  before  were  more  often  now  high 
caliber  bullets.  Some  "brothers"  from  Fort  Bragg  came  down  to 
Wilmington  to  help  defend  the  community.  Ben  sent  word  from  the 

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Two 

church  that  everybody  was  to  use  the  utmost  caution  and  care  that  the 
community  not  be  harmed.  When  someone  argued  for  burning,  Ben 
challenged  the  provocation  of  the  suggestion.  These  were  Black  homes 
surrounding  this  Black  church;  even  if  a  business  was  white-owned,  fire 
knew  no  discretion  when  it  spread. 

Night  fell,  and  with  it  any  hesitation  of  the  Klan  to  fire  on  the  Black 
community.  Nearly  5,000  rounds  of  ammunition  were  fired  that  Friday 
evening.  Seventy  people  in  and  around  the  Gregory  Church  were  hit, 
among  them  Marvin  Patrick,  one  of  the  leading  student  activists.  The 
receiving  hospital  treated  and  released  whites  that  evening,  but  any  Black 
who  showed  up  with  a  gunshot  wound  was  arrested  for  rioting. 

Ben  recalled  later,  "I  was  really  shocked  to  see  people  battling  like  that. 
At  that  point,  I  just  didn't  understand  the  depths  of  feelings  involved.  I 
didn't  know  much  about  the  history  of  Wilmington.  1  had  heard  some- 
thing about  1898  but  I  didn't  know  it  was  as  deeply  ingrained  as  it 
apparently  was.  You  had  some  folks  that  actually  thought  that  just 
because  the  Black  students  marched  and  because  they  were  having  some 
meetings,  that  they  were  going  to  pay  back  the  white  people  for  what 
happened  in  1898.  And  so  to  keep  the  Blacks  from  paying  them  back, 
they  were  going  to  wipe  out  the  Black  community  again.  And  even  with 
all  this  shooting  the  mayor  refused  to  set  a  curfew.  People  could  still  go 
downtown,  buy  a  gun  and  ammunition,  come  shooting  into  the  commu- 
nity, and  go  back  downtown  again." 

Meanwhile,  huddled  inside  the  church,  were  a  couple  of  hundred 
students,  mainly  teenagers,  dozens  only  10  or  11  years  old.  Two  of  the 
influential  elders  of  the  church  hastily  called  a  meeting  of  the  church 
board  to  evict  the  students  and  ask  for  police  protection  of  the  church. 
That  such  protection  had  previously  been  denied  failed  to  impress  the 
two  men.  The  young  people  left  the  church,  but  other  adults  in  the 
congregation,  especially  those  from  the  neighborhood,  prevailed  upon 
the  trustees  for  a  reconsideration  of  their  decision.  They  were  concerned 
about  Rev.  Templeton,  now  without  protection,  as  well  as  the  students 
and  the  church  itself.  The  students  were  invited  back. 

This  was  now  Saturday  night.  Jim  Grant  later  reported  for  the 
Southern  Patriot:  "Early  that  evening,  six  carloads  of  whites,  with  guns 
prominently  displayed,  drove  through  the  police  barricades  and  headed 
toward  the  church.  The  first  truck  stopped  right  in  front  of  the  guards' 
barricade  and  started  shooting.  A  Black  minister  who  was  a  little  slow 
about  taking  cover  was  hit,  but  he  managed  to  crawl  out  of  the  line  of  fire. 
The  [community]  guards  [of  the  church]  returned  the  fire  and  the 
motorcade  sped  off.  The  minister  was  able  to  drive  for  medical  help  and 

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Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

has  since  recovered.  Later  that  night  the  police  tried  to  lay  down  a  cover 
of  fire  behind  which  the  Klansmen  would  rush  the  church."  Inside 
Gregory  Congregational,  Ben  was  taking  care  of  the  students  when  he 
was  hit  in  the  back  by  three  shotgun  pellets. 

All  regular  television  programming  in  Wilmington  was  canceled  for 
live  newscasts  about  the  "Holy  Wilmington  Insurrection"  interspersed 
by  calls  for  "law  and  order"  by  the  city  authorities.  The  grass  was  clearly 
getting  ahead  of  the  gardener. 

While  Ben  was  resting  in  Rev.  Templeton's  living  room  and  Jim  was  in 
the  church  basement  checking  on  remaining  supplies,  someone  ran  into 
the  church  to  announce  that  Mike's  Grocery  was  on  fire.  Mike's  Grocery 
was  a  white-owned  store  in  the  neighborhood  which  had  caught  on  fire 
the  past  two  nights  in  a  row.  Rumor  among  the  neighbors  had  it  that 
Mike  was  taking  advantage  of  the  gunfire  to  collect  insurance  money  on 
a  store  that  was  sure  to  be  put  out  of  business  by  a  boycott  anyway. 

Next  door  to  the  grocery  on  either  side  were  family  houses.  Some  of 
the  people  were  still  asleep  that  night,  unaware  of  the  fire  next  door  and 
their  imminent  danger.  Others,  still  awake,  were  determined  not  to  leave 
their  homes  for  fear  of  being  hit  by  vigilante  bullets.  Ben  asked  for 
volunteers  from  among  those  inside  the  church  and  let  them  out  into  the 
street  to  bring  the  neighbors  back  to  the  church  for  their  protection  and, 
if  possible,  to  save  their  furniture  from  the  fire.  One  of  Ben's  volunteers, 
Steve  Mitchell,  moved  up  the  street  to  pull  a  nearby  fire  alarm.  Police, 
waiting  across  the  street  in  darkness,  shot  him  down  and  dragged  him  50 
feet  to  a  police  car.  Later  word  came  that  Steve  was  dead,  although 
witnesses  state  that  he  was  alive  before  being  dragged  into  the  car. 

When  the  community  heard  the  television  announcement  of  Steve 
Mitchell's  death,  hell  just  broke  loose.  The  distinction  between  the  Klan 
and  the  police  was  thereafter  eliminated  in  the  minds  of  the  Black 
community  surrounding  Gregory  Congregational  Church.  When  some 
police  were  shot  at,  the  television  reported  the  authorities  downtown 
deputized  white  "volunteers."  Everybody  was  now  the  law,  including  the 
Klan  and  the  Rights  of  White  People.  Still  the  city  refused  to  impose  a 
curfew. 

By  now  Governor  Bob  Scott  ordered  the  elite  riot  squad  of  the  North 
Carolina  Highway  Patrol  into  Wilmington.  In  the  wee  morning  hours, 
Rev.  Templeton  was  awakened  by  a  call  from  the  highway  patrol 
commander  of  the  riot  squad,  William  Guy,  who  asked  to  speak  with 
Ben.  Guy  said  that  the  patrol  was  in  Wilmington  to  protect  the  citizenry, 
that  he  understood  that  "you  people"  were  complaining  about  some  folks 
shooting  at  the  church,  that  the  government  had  sent  in  the  patrol  to  stop 

80 


Two 

the  violence,  that  he  was  sending  his  men  into  the  church  to  protect  the 
young  people  inside,  that  he  wanted  Ben  to  order  his  men  not  to  fire  at  the 
patrolmen. 

Ben  explained  that  he  had  no  men,  that  he  was  lying  on  the  floor  along 
with  everyone  else,  that  he  had  no  control  over  what  was  breaking 
outside,  that  he  would  step  outside  the  church  to  talk  with  Guy.  When 
Ben  opened  the  door  of  Rev.  Templeton's  house,  a  .357  magnum  bullet, 
pride  of  the  highway  patrol,  whizzed  past  his  head  and  tore  a  plank  off 
the  minister's  house.  With  splendid  protection  like  this,  negotiations 
broke  off. 

Sunday  morning  came  in  with  church  bells  ringing  and  the  staccato  of 
gunfire  providing  counterpoint.  Ben  remained  inside  the  Templeton 
home.  About  10  o'clock,  a  white  man  in  a  pickup  truck  drove  up  to  the 
barricades  outside  the  church,  pulled  out  his  gun  and  started  to  fire  into 
the  building.  He  never  made  it.  One  of  Templeton's  neighbors  came  in 
the  house  to  tell  Ben  and  the  minister  and  his  wife  that  this  white  man  was 
laying  outside  in  the  gutter,  his  blood  running  down  the  sidewalk.  Again, 
Ben  left  the  church  area  to  call  for  an  ambulance,  explaining  that  this 
time  it  was  a  white  man  that  was  dying.  The  ambulance  never  came  but 
eventually  two  Wilmington  police  pulled  up,  took  the  man,  later  identi- 
fied as  a  Harvey  Cumber,  and  placed  him  in  the  back  seat  of  their  squad 
car.  The  police  reported  that  Cumber  had  a  gun  with  a  spent  shell  in  his 
hand  at  the  time  he  was  shot.  But  when  the  news  was  announced  on 
television  90  minutes  later,  it  was  reported  that  the  second  fatality  of  the 
Wilmington  race  riots  started  by  Blacks  was  a  white  motorist  on  his  way 
to  church,  murdered  by  Black  snipers. 

News  of  Cumber's  death  brought  dozens  of  cars  and  trucks  with  armed 
whites  into  Wilmington  ghettos.  The  Gregory  Church  was  no  longer  the 
target.  Any  house  inhabited  by  Blacks  was  fired  on  indiscriminately.  Any 
Black  person  on  the  streets  of  Wilmington  was  fair  game.  Chief  William- 
son of  the  Wilmington  police  acknowledged  that  he  had  lost  control  of 
the  situation.  His  orders  by  now  had  proved  useless.  Williamson  called 
upon  Governor  Scott  to  send  in  the  National  Guard. 

It  took  some  time  for  the  Guard's  artillery  division  to  get  its  tanks  into 
Wilmington.  Some  guardsmen  came  by  dusk  but  the  main  contingents 
didn't  arrive  until  after  midnight,  Monday  morning.  The  Adjutant 
General  of  the  Guard  provided  a  press  bus  for  CBS  and  NBC,  Time, 
Newsweek  and  the  rest  of  the  national  press  coming  in  from  Washington 
and  Atlanta.  A  huge  searchlight  and  infrared  gun-scopes  were  provided 
to  the  newsmen  to  watch  the  Guard's  operation.  Live  television  cameras 
showed  North  Carolina  viewers  the  National  Guard  sporting  M16s 

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Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 


creeping  up  the  sidewalks  toward  the  church,  while  armored  personnel 
carriers  and  tanks  bearing  .50  caliber  machine-guns  rolled  up  to  the 
doors.  The  assault  troops  pulled  out  their  grenades,  readied  their  tear  gas 
cannisters,  and  kicked  down  the  doors  of  a  little  Black  church  in 
Wilmington.  Inside  they  found — nobody. 

Ben  Chavis  and  the  students  watched  the  scene  on  television  in 
Raleigh.  They  of  course  also  heard  that  the  Guard  was  coming  to  town 
and,  based  on  the  treatment  they  had  received  from  the  Wilmington 
police  and  the  highway  patrol,  knew  they  might  be  killed.  Especially  after 
a  white  man  had  been  killed.  So  under  cover  of  darkness,  they  had 
evacuated  the  church,  Rev.  Templeton's  house,  and  the  homes  of  30 
families  in  the  area  and  left  Wilmington,  passing  the  Guard  as  it  rolled 
into  the  city. 

The  National  Guard  and  Governor  Scott  were  incensed,  having  staged 
a  million-dollar  live  television  show,  with  the  national  press  on  hand,  all 
for  naught.  They  responded  by  breaking  down  the  doors  of  Black  homes, 
without  search  warrants.  The  community  was  sealed  off,  highways  were 
blocked,  cars  stopped  and  searched,  and  Black  housing  projects  searched 
door  to  door.  For  the  next  week  Wilmington's  Black  community  lived 
under  virtual  martial  law. 


1  i  orth  Carolina  has  respect  for  the  soldier  boy,"  says  a  former 
military  reporter  for  the  Raleigh  News  and  Observer.  "This  is  a  whole 
'nother  country.  With  more  volunteers  in  the  Civil  War  than  any  other 
southern  state,  it  suffered  a  military  defeat  a  hundred  years  ago.  But  if 
you  go  out  with  the  national  guard  today  it  seems  like  going  out  with  old 
Joe  Johnson's  troops  a  century  ago.  All  these  good  old  country  boys 
spitting  tobacco  and  shooting  the  whiskers  off  a  cat."39 

This  is  one  state  that  better  have  respect  for  the  "soldier  boy."  There 
are  600,000  veterans  in  a  total  population  of  5  million.  Of  those,  142,000 
are  Vietnam  vets.  Veterans  and  their  dependants  are  2.5  million  North 
Carolinians,  fully  half  of  the  state.40 

North  Carolina  is  far  from  the  top  of  the  list  in  "defense  industries," 
but  is  just  about  number  one  in  direct  military  presence.  It  contains  the 
largest  military  base  in  the  United  States  at  Fort  Bragg;  the  largest  coast 
guard  base  in  the  world  at  Elizabeth  City,  with  10,000  coast  guardsmen 
and  civilian  employees;  and  nearly  one  third  of  all  U.S.  marines  are  based 
at  Camp  Lejeune,  the  Cherry  Point  marine  air  station  and  the  New  River 
marine  air  station.  Pope  and  Johnson  air  force  bases  add  another  11,000 


82 


Two 


men  in  uniform.  On  the  northern  shore  of  Albermarle  Sound  sits  the 
Harvey  Point  Defense  Testing  Activity,  a  CIA  facility  for  training  in 
sabotage  and  demolition.  According  to  The  News  and  Observer  (August 
3, 1975)  there  are  no  published  figures  for  the  number  of  CIA  "soldiers" 
on  this  secret  base.  What  can  be  counted  adds  up  to  nearly  90,000 
servicemen  and  another  200,000  civilian  personnel,  military  dependents 
and  retirees  gathered  together  in  the  eastern  third  of  the  state.  That's 
more  people  than  the  combined  populations  of  Winston-Salem  and 
Raleigh.  Over  $  1 .4  billion  spent  each  year  by  military  personnel  and  their 
families  in  the  shops  and  country  stores  of  eastern  North  Carolina  has  a 
powerful  impact.41  If  they  ain't  just  whistlin'  Dixie,  it's  because  the 
Marine  Corps  Hymn  is  higher  on  the  charts  these  days. 

Camp  Lejeune,  brags  Commanding  General  R.D.  Bohn,  is  "one  of  the 
largest  'industries'"  in  the  state  and  the  "greatest  single  contributor"  to 
the  economy  of  eastern  North  Carolina.42  Built  in  1941,  the  reservation 
covers  170  square  miles,  and  contains  two  golf  courses,  some  6,000 
buildings  and  facilities  for  a  city  of  60,000  people.  Lejeune's  population 
alone  spends  about  $23  million  a  year  on  North  Carolina  goods  and 
services. 

The  political  influence  of  the  marines  in  this  part  of  the  state  is  at  least 
as  important  as  the  economic  clout.  This  was  the  launching  base  for  the 
1958  invasion  of  Lebanon,  ordered  by  President  Eisenhower;  the  1962 
Cuban  missile  crisis,  directed  by  President  Kennedy;  the  "incursion"  into 
Santo  Domingo,  under  President  Johnson.  During  1971  and  1972, 
according  to  the  official  base  history,  "units  were  engaged  in  training 
exercises  in  the  Mojave  Desert,  across  the  Appalachian  ranges,  along 
cold  rocky  Maine  beaches  as  well  as  in  the  Caribbean." 

From  the  halls  of  Montezuma  to  the  shores  of  Jacksonville,  N.C.,  the 
marines  of  Camp  Lejeune  make  their  presence  known.  Jacksonville,  the 
town  adjacent  to  the  base,  is  said  to  have  been  a  favorite  hideout  of 
buccaneers  like  Henry  Morgan  and  Blackbeard.  Now,  "The  City  on  the 
Go,"  as  the  Greater  Jacksonville  Chamber  of  Commerce  would  have  it,  is 
the  favorite  hangout  of  the  2nd  Marine  Division.  The  town  did  well  by 
the  Vietnam  War:  in  the  decade  1963-72  Jacksonville  grew  240  percent 43 
In  the  last  five  of  those  years,  more  than  3,000  marines  retired  in  the 
county. 

Of  the  marines  on  base,  more  than  3,000  are  originally  from  in-state. 
As  one  marine  officer  says,  "Camp  Lejeune  is  North  Carolina."44  A 
civilian-military  council  has  been  organized  to  bind  more  tightly  the  ties 
between  town  and  base.  The  council  includes  generals  and  Onslow 
County  Chamber  of  Commerce  leaders,  the  mayor  of  Jacksonville  and 

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Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

assorted  gentry  of  civic  mind.  Off-duty  marines  volunteer  for  community 
activities— putting  roofs  on  nursing  homes,  plastering  shacks,  and  such, 
under  names  like  Operation  Concern.  A  Lejeune  spokesman  claims  that 
the  marines,  subject  as  they  are  to  federal  law,  are  a  force  for  civil  rights  in 
backwater  North  Carolina.  "Seventy-nine-year-old  Aunt  Janie  won't 
change,  but  the  New  South  will,"  he  argues.  But  the  same  officer  recalls 
the  summer  of  1969  when  Black  and  Chicano  marines  fought  white 
marines  off  base.  Two  were  killed. 

At  that  point  a  career  marine  named  Leroy  Gibson  became  fed  up  and 
left  the  corps  to  form  the  Rights  of  White  People  organization  (ROWP). 
The  ROWP  was  nothing  if  not  active.  A  Jacksonville  anti-war  bookstore 
called  United  We  Stand  was  bombed  by  ROWP  terrorists.  Marines  were 
recruited  by  Gibson  to  break  strikes.  Civil  rights  demonstrations  were 
broken  up  by  force,  synagogues  and  newspapers  bombed,  Black  leaders 
shot  at  and  threatened.  The  ROWP  organized  armed  patrols  of  Black 
and  white  communities.  Leroy  Gibson,  who  lights  up  any  room  he  leaves, 
claimed  the  existence  of  seven  or  eight  cells  at  Camp  Lejeune  in  the  early 
1970s.  A  Lejeune  spokesman  acknowledged  that  after  20  years  in  the 
corps,  "there  are  officers  who  served  with  him  and  who  still  maintain 
their  friendship."45 

If  North  Carolina  is  New  South,  Fort  Bragg  is  New  Army.  Public 
relations  plumage  covers  the  old  basics  and  masks  the  new.  Officers  are 
trained  to  deal  with  the  public.  Community  services,  human  relations, 
equal  opportunity,  civic  action — these  are  the  new  tasks  of  Fort  Bragg,  to 
read  the  publicity  brochures.  The  base,  whose  population  makes  it  the 
second  largest  city  in  the  state  after  Charlotte,  was  named  for  Braxton 
Bragg,  a  North  Carolina  general  in  the  Confederate  Army.  Here  is 
housed  the  XVIII  Airborne  Corps  with  its  attached  units,  including  the 
82nd  Airborne.  Bragg  is  also  home  base  for  the  Green  Berets,  and  the 
Psychological  Warfare  Center,  renamed  the  JFK  Center  for  Military 
Assistance  by  some  enterprising  huckster. 

The  82nd  Airborne,  nicknamed  the  "All  Americans,"  not  only  had 
successful  engagements  in  Santo  Domingo  and  Saigon,  according  to 
official  army  propaganda,  but  "on  several  occasions  . .  .  sent  forces  on 
Civil  Disturbance  missions  to  various  cities  within  the  United  States." 
Division  training  programs  take  place  in  "an  adventure-filled  at- 
mosphere"— deployments  to  Puerto  Rico,  Panama,  Texas,  Kentucky, 
Georgia  and  Alabama;  also  in  "Greece,  Turkey,  Korea  and  on  the  North 
Carolina  coast."46 

The  503rd  Military  Police  Battalion,  based  at  Bragg,  "continues  to 
serve  in  the  same  tradition  established  in  such  places  as  the  beaches  of 

84 


Two 

Normandy,  the  Dominican  Republic  and,  more  recently,  our  nation's 
capital  and  Miami  Beach."  Truly  All  Americans,  the  16th  Military  Police 
Group  is  stationed  near  corps  headquarters  but  one  never  needs  travel 
far:  "A  look  in  your  rear-view  mirror  will  usually  reveal  the  presence  of 
one  or  two  of  the  finest  military  policemen  anywhere."47 

John  D.  Granger,  commander  of  the  503rd  MPs,  is  a  man  of  vision, 
believing  as  he  does  that  a  concerted  military  effort  could  make  an 
anachronism  of  social  work  agencies.  The  Pentagon  "can  make  a  more 
rapid  and  profound  impact  on  our  society  than  any  other  single  institu- 
tion," Granger  argues.  "If  each  member  of  the  department  were  to  spend 
an  hour  a  month  on  a  socially  productive  project,  this  would  exceed  the 
total  efforts  that  all  volunteer  welfare  agencies  provide  in  a  year."48  Just 
such  thinking  prompted  Lt.  Gen.  John  J.  Tolson,  then  CO  at  Bragg,  to 
pioneer  the  Domestic  Action  programs  in  1970.  Tolson,  a  man  with  an 
ear  for  current  trends,  called  the  programs  "Nation-building." 

Hoke  County,  adjoining  the  base  on  the  west,  is  one  of  the  100  poorest 
counties  in  the  United  States,  with  severe  economic  and  medical  prob- 
lems. So  Ft.  Bragg  Domestic  Action  Teams  updated  county  medical 
records,  conducted  tests  for  tuberculosis  and  provided  medical  corpsmen 
to  help  operate  the  county  clinic.  Temporary  water  mains  were  installed, 
children's  playgrounds  constructed.  At  the  same  time,  Green  Berets  were 
sent  to  Anson  County  "to  improve  the  ability  of  military  assistance 
personnel  to  work  with  civilians"  in  clearing  brush,  learning  first  aid, 
training  in  "public  safety,"  and  otherwise  meeting  public  needs.  An 
athletic  field  was  built  for  East  Bladen  High  School  in  Elizabethtown.  At 
the  Western  Correctional  Center,  a  high-rise  prison,  Special  Forces 
troops  came  to  train  select  groups  of  inmates.  Apparently  the  soldiers 
made  an  impression.  According  to  Granger,  "Most  of  the  prisoners  now 
spit-shine  their  shoes  to  emulate  a  glittering  Green  Beret  look.  Some  have 
even  converted  prison-brown  to  Army-black." 

The  North  Carolina  Department  of  Human  Resources  has  thrown  its 
weight  behind  Domestic  Action.  Together  with  local  corporations  to 
help  foot  the  bill,  the  state  now  organizes  week-long  encampments  at 
Fort  Bragg  for  North  Carolina  children  to  experience  the  hidden  joys 
and  spiritual  rewards  of  military  life.  Domestic  Action  programs  have 
proven  so  successful  to  their  designers  that  they  have  now  been  effected 
in  Salinas,  California,  Orangeburg,  South  Carolina,  and  a  score  of  other 
communities  from  sea  to  shining  sea.  No  ghosts  of  George  Custer  past 
are  these  soldiers  as  they  check  teeth  on  Montana's  Northern  Cheyenne 
Reservation  or  instruct  Florida  Seminoles  in  methods  of  law  enforce- 
ment. 


85 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

Domestic  Action  was  to  become  the  army's  answer  to  the  war  on 
poverty.  Who  better  to  conduct  a  war,  no  matter  the  enemy,  the  army 
might  argue.  Besides,  the  soldier,  subject  to  military  discipline,  is  a  far 
more  dependable  representative  of  Old  Glory  to  the  poor  and  powerless 
photos  of  soldiers  stoned  on  heroin  with  garlands  of  human  ears  strung 
than  a  civilian  VISTA  volunteer  who,  likely  as  not,  was  a  peace-creep 
trying  to  avoid  military  service  in  the  first  place. 

Domestic  Action  was  an  idea  whose  time  had  come  at  just  the  right 
moment  for  the  Nixon  Administration,  which  had  set  about  the  task  of 
dismantling  the  Office  of  Economic  Opportunity.  With  its  vaccination 
programs  and  building  playgrounds  for  impoverished  children,  Domes- 
tic Action  would  have  important  residual  effects.  It  could  win  the  hearts 
and  minds  of  those  who  may  have  become  disaffected  at  the  daily  news  of 
Vietnamese  being  thrown  to  their  deaths  from  helicopters,  and  news 
photos  of  soldiers  stoned  on  heroin  with  garlands  of  human  ears  strung 
on  their  jeeps. 

North  Carolina  is  hardly  unique  in  its  hiring  of  retired  military 
personnel — a  colonel  to  be  Charlotte  city  engineer,  another  to  head  up  a 
branch  of  the  state  corrections  department,  for  example.  But  the  state 
may  have  set  a  precedent  when  it  hired  General  Tolson,  the  commander 
of  Fort  Bragg  and  resident  genius  of  Domestic  Action,  to  become 
secretary  of  the  North  Carolina  Department  of  Military  and  Veterans 
Affairs  (DMVA).  General  Tolson,  a  bear  of  a  man  with  the  sort  of 
enthusiasm  one  associates  with  the  chairman  of  a  save-our-parks  com- 
mittee, says,  "We  make  no  distinction  between  the  military  and  the 
community  at  large.  You  can't  separate  the  two."49 

One  of  the  general's  responsibilities  in  his  new  position  was  that  most 
direct  of  military-civilian  ties,  the  National  Guard.  In  North  Carolina, 
the  Guard  has  12,000  troops.  General  Tolson,  bearing  a  disarming 
personality  and  grim  statistics,  boosted  the  Black  and  Indian  composi- 
tion of  the  Guard  to  more  than  6  percent.  Five  years  before,  99  percent  of 
the  Guard  was  white.  These  were  the  troops  that  were  sent  in  to  quell 
"civic  disturbances"  that  grew  out  of  racist  attacks  on  Black  communities 
in  the  early  1970s.  Judge  John  Walker  of  Wilmington,  which  saw  the 
state's  worst  violence  of  those  years,  says  he  received  letters  from 
Guardsmen  in  nearby  Blyden  and  Pender  counties.  "They  have 
organized  armed  citizens'  committees,  patrolling  against  the  few  known 
criminal  revolutionists.  I  don't  blame  them,"  says  Judge  Walker.  "The 
Guardsmen  are  ordinary  American  citizens — farmboys,  workers,  law- 
yers. They  are  supposed  to  defend  their  families."50  (During  Governor 
Robert  Scott's  administration,  1969-73,  the  Guard  was  called  to  state 


86 


Two 

service  28  times;  nine  times  for  "civil  disorders";  once  for  a  student 
demonstration;  12  for  missing  person  searches,  and  six  times  for  ice 
storms  and  hurricanes.  In  those  same  years,  the  number  of  Black 
Guardsmen  increased  from  76  to  233  out  of  12,000,  or  from  half  of  one 
percent  to  almost  two  percent.) 

General  Tolson's  DMVA  also  included  Veterans  Administration,  the 
Civil  Air  Patrol,  the  Adjutant  General's  office,  and  the  Division  of  Civil 
Preparedness.  This  latter  aspect  of  the  general's  work  used  to  be  called 
"civil  defense"  but  was  switched  "to  change  the  public  image."  The 
division  prepares  plans  for  nuclear  attack  or  other  man-made  and 
natural  disasters.  DMVA's  office  is  located  in  the  sub-basement  of  the 
state  administration  building.  This  was  the  governor's  "nerve  center"  in 
times  of  disaster,  complete  with  its  own  power  plant,  water  supply, 
sleeping  and  cooking  facilities,  and  emergency  food  supply.  Called  the 
Emergency  Operating  Center,  General  Tolson  occupied  the  space  in  lieu 
of  thermonuclear  fall-out  over  Raleigh.  The  DMVA  still  has  its  shelters 
and  fall-out  testing.  The  North  Carolina  Department  of  Transportation 
offers  a  40-hour  course  of  instruction  for  radiological  treatment.  In  local 
communities,  county  governments  bring  students  to  the  fairgrounds  to 
simulate  bombing  casualties.  Fort  Bragg  lends  its  helping  hand  in  this 
effort. 

The  state  legislature  gave  General  Tolson's  DMVA  new  powers  in 
early  1974  when  it  added  to  his  domain  the  implementation  of  state 
energy  politics.  With  coordination  of  the  National  Guard,  civil  defense, 
and  energy  policy  under  his  command,  General  Tolson  was  the  quintes- 
sence of  his  own  view  that  there  is  no  distinction  between  soldier  and 
civilian.  Two  months  before  the  legislature  acted,  the  82nd  Airborne  at 
Fort  Bragg  was  put  on  riot  control  training  and  alert,  planning  for 
martial  law.  Operation  Garden  Plot  was  in  effect  as  a  caution  against 
gasoline  riots  during  the  weeks  of  the  international  fuel  crisis. 

Operation  Garden  Plot  was  nurtured  in  1967  as  a  Department  of  Army 
contingency  plan  for  imposing  martial  law.  It  called  for  centralized  army 
coordination  with  local  and  state  government  and  police  authorities  in 
case  of  civil  disorders.  While  the  Pentagon  denies  that  Garden  Plot 
contained  provisions  for  rounding  up  dissident  civilians,  one  officer  said 
that  "it  would  be  unlikely  that  such  plans  would  have  been  committed  to 
writing."  Garden  Plot  exercises  are  known  to  have  been  carried  out  in 
part  at  Kent  State  University  in  1971,  resulting  in  at  least  four  student 
deaths,  and  at  Wounded  Knee  on  the  Pine  Ridge  Oglala  Sioux  Reserva- 
tion in  1973.  Apparently  other  Garden  Plot  exercises  were  held  in  the  late 
1960s  somewhere  in  California.  For  at  a  planning  conference  in  anticipa- 

87 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

tion  of  the  action,  Governor  Ronald  Reagan  hailed  the  operation: 
"Garden  Plot  is  in  line  with  the  6,000-year  history  of  man  pushing  the 
jungle  back,  creating  a  clearing  where  men  can  live  in  peace  and  go  about 
their  business  with  some  measure  of  safety.  Of  late,  the  jungle  has  been 
creeping  in  again  a  little  closer  to  our  boundaries/'  Inasmuch  as  "civil 
rights  movements"  head  the  list  of  "dissident  elements"  that  Garden  Plot 
seeks  to  quell,  Reagan's  references  to  the  jungle  leave  little  room  for 
misinterpretation.  Those  in  his  audience  included  500  military  men, 
police  officials  and  corporate  executives  from  Boeing,  Sylvania,  Bank  of 
America,  Pacific  Telephone  and  Telegraph,  Pacific  Gas  and  Electric,  and 
Standard  Oil  of  California.  The  governor  jocularly  said  that  if  his 
enemies  saw  him  there  they  would  see  it  as  proof  he  "was  planning  a 
military  takeover."51 

In  1974  Garden  Plot  was  being  implemented  for  North  Carolina 
motorists,  under  the  gaze  of  fatherly  General  Tolson. 


When  the  600  flak-jacketed  National  Guardsmen  took  the  Gregory 
Congregational  Church  on  that  Sabbath  in  February  1971  and  finally 
imposed  a  curfew,  Reverend  and  Mrs.  Templeton  were  forced  to  flee 
Wilmington.  Later  at  a  meeting  of  the  state  civil  rights  commission  the 
minister  would  testify  that  over  50  shots  were  fired  into  his  house  and 
church  in  the  four  days  of  "rebellion."  The  local  authorities  claimed  they 
could  find  no  evidence  of  such  shots,  despite  the  obvious  bullet  holes  that 
pockmarked  the  church  walls.  One  evening  during  the  siege,  a  white  man 
shot  into  the  Templeton  home  after  the  minister  refused  to  open  the  door 
at  3:30  a.m.  "so  they  could  talk."  When  Rev.  Templeton  asked  the  police 
to  come  they  refused.  They  showed  up  instead  four  hours  later  because, 
as  one  policeman  explained,  "We  heard  that  Rev.  Templeton  had  been 
killed  and  we  came  over  to  identify  the  body."  Finding  the  minister  alive, 
the  cops  photographed  and  fingerprinted  him  in  order  "to  be  able  to 
identify  the  body"  at  a  future  date.  Police  made  no  effort  to  locate  the 
nightriders  nor  protect  this  house  of  worship  and  this  man  of  the  cloth. 
The  handwriting  was  clearly  stained  on  the  broken  glass  windows  of 
Gregory  Church. 

The  following  Thursday  was  designated  Black  Thursday  by  Ben 
Chavis  at  a  Raleigh  press  conference.  High  school  students  from 
throughout  North  Carolina  were  asked  to  come  to  Wilmington  that  day 
for  the  funeral  of  Steve  Mitchell.  City  officials  obtained  an  injunction  to 
prevent  the  funeral  from  being  held  at  the  Gregory  Church.  As  nearly 

88 


Two 

3,000  mourners  gathered  for  the  funeral  march,  another  nearby  church 
opened  its  doors  for  the  ceremony.  The  violence  and  horror  of  the  past 
week  had  frightened  most  of  the  city's  God-fearing  church  community. 
But  the  young  Black  people  were  determined  that  Steve  Mitchell's  death 
not  be  in  vain. 

They  asked  Ben  to  remain  on  in  Wilmington  and  he  agreed.  They 
formed  an  organization  to  continue  the  struggle,  Black  Youth  Builds  a 
Black  Community  (BYBBC),  and  elected  a  president,  Roderick  Kirby. 
The  New  Hanover  Board  of  Education  responded  by  initiating  a  federal 
injunction,  naming  as  defendants  Rev.  Templeton,  the  Commission  for 
Racial  Justice,  and  the  Southern  Christian  Leadership  Conference,  to 
prohibit  them  helping  to  organize  the  school  boycott. 

By  now  Ben  had  become  the  Reverend  Benjamin  F.  Chavis,  Jr.  After 
completing  an  18-month  In-Service  Ministerial  Training  Program  under 
the  sponsorship  of  the  Commission  for  Racial  Justice,  he  was  ordained  a 
Christian  minister  of  the  Black  Christian  Pan  Africanist  Church  at  a 
ceremony  conducted  by  clergy  of  the  United  Church  of  Christ  in  New 
York.  The  church  was  part  of  a  denomination  founded  in  1967  by  the 
UCCs  Rev.  Albert  Cleage,  Jr.  of  Detroit.  The  ordination  was  part  of  a 
logical  development  for  Ben.  His  father  had  been  lay  reader  and  senior 
warden  in  an  Episcopal  church  in  Oxford.  Frequently  without  a  minister, 
the  church  often  asked  Ben  Sr.  to  serve  as  its  pastor.  Every  Sunday  for  20 
years,  Ben  Jr.  carried  the  cross  and  lighted  the  candles.  During  his 
student  years  in  Charlotte,  when  he  became  a  part-time  organizer  for  the 
Southern  Christian  Leadership  Conference,  Ben  found  himself  every 
evening  speaking  on  civil  rights  issues  in  rural  churches,  large  and  small, 
througout  the  state.  Years  later,  Ben  would  write  to  a  friend,  "It  was  in, 
through,  and  by  the  Church,  that  I  was  learning  how  to  organize  on  the 
community  grass-roots  level.  At  this  time,  I  became  a  devoted  follower  of 
Dr.  Martin  L.  King,  Jr.  The  effective  and  creative  non-violent  role  the 
church  was  playing  to  bring  about  social  change  impressed  me  to  the 
point  that  I  knew  that  sooner  or  later  I  would  devote  my  life  to  the  church 
and  struggle  for  justice  and  humanity."  After  the  Oxford  struggle  when 
he  became  field  organizer  for  the  Commission  for  Racial  Justice  and 
entered  its  In-Service  Ministerial  Training  Program,  Ben  joined  the  Oak 
Level  United  Church  of  Christ  in  Henderson.  The  Oak  Level  Church  was 
pastored  by  Leon  White,  Ben's  co-worker,  who  gave  his  church  over  to 
serve  as  a  center  for  organizing  the  Henderson  students  and  parents 
movement.  Now,  having  survived  the  assault  on  the  Gregory  Congrega- 
tional Church  in  Wilmington,  Ben  felt  that  Black  Christian  nationalism 
was  at  its  peak  in  terms  of  new  directed  goals  for  the  church  in  the  Black 

89 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

community.  While  the  Black  Christian  Pan  Africanist  Church  did  not 
meet  every  traditional  requirement  of  the  more  orthodox,  Black  commu- 
nities had  their  own  traditions  which  harkened  back  to  slavery,  in  which 
they  recognized  their  spiritual  leadership  in  a  style  different  from  the 
seminary  training  imported  from  Europe,  to  which  whites  had  access  and 
Black  slaves  did  not.  In  an  article  for  the  magazine  Christianity  and 
Crisis,  Robert  Maurer  would  write  about  Ben's  father  serving  as  minister 
in  the  Oxford  church  although  not  actually  ordained  to  do  so:  "The 
requirements  of  the  Spirit  took  precedent  over  the  strictures  of  the  Law. 
In  his  son's  case  as  well,  the  requirements  of  the  Spirit  have  been 
paramount  and,  at  times,  because  of  his  keen  sense  of  justice,  set  squarely 
against  the  law." 

Now  back  in  North  Carolina  after  his  ordination  ceremony,  the 
Reverend  Chavis  had  no  church  of  his  own.  To  supplement  his  income 
from  the  Commission,  Ben  reopened  the  Soul  Kitchen  in  Oxford  and 
commuted  the  160  miles  back  and  forth  to  Wilmington.  One  night  in 
March,  a  month  after  the  siege  of  the  Gregory  Church,  Ben  was  working 
in  the  Kitchen  when  he  received  a  call  from  Leon  White  of  the  Commis- 
sion for  Racial  Justice.  Rev.  White  explained  that  he  had  just  been  called 
by  Molly  Hicks,  one  of  the  key  adult  supporters  of  the  Wilmington 
school  boycott.  A  shooting  had  just  occurred  at  her  house.  There  was  a 
rumor  that  a  white  man  came  up  to  the  Hicks  home,  knocked  at  the  door, 
and  when  Clifton  Eugene  Wright,  a  teenage  friend  of  Molly's  daughter 
Leatrice,  opened  the  door,  the  man  blew  young  Wright's  head  off  with  a 
shotgun.  Ben  agreed  to  go  to  Wilmington  in  the  morning.  But  Molly 
Hicks  called  him  and  said  she  was  being  grilled  by  the  police  and  needed 
legal  help  immediately.  Ben  called  attorney  James  Ferguson  in  Charlotte 
who  agreed  to  advise  Mrs.  Hicks.  For  the  next  year  Molly  and  Leatrice 
Hicks  were  targeted  by  the  Wilmington  police  for  harassment. 

The  assault  on  the  Gregory  Church  and  the  shooting  of  Clifton  Wright 
were  only  the  beginning  of  a  year  of  bloodletting  in  Wilmington. 
Violence  wracked  the  schools  and  in  March  both  high  schools  were 
closed  down.  Armed  bands  from  the  Rights  of  White  People  began  to 
patrol  the  streets  in  cars  again.  The  reigning  mood  of  racist  revanchism 
was  expressed  by  District  Court  Judge  John  Walker  who,  referring  to 
Black  Wilmington  students,  declared,  "We  should  have  sent  in  Lieuten- 
ant Calley  to  clean  them  up."  In  May  a  Black  woman,  Carrie  Lee 
Johnson,  was  shot  in  both  legs  by  whites  in  a  moving  car.  A  Black  soldier 
on  leave,  A.  D.  Wright,  was  shot  from  ambush  that  same  month.  Two 
white  policemen  beat  up  a  Black  man,  Willie  Powell,  on  the  street, 
sending  him  to  a  hospital  with  eye  damage  and  a  concussion.  Powell  was 

90 


Two 


sentenced  to  four  months  imprisonment  for  resisting  arrest;  the  police 
were  found  not  guilty  of  assault. 

Another  young  Black  man  on  his  way  home  from  school  was  shot  in 
the  back  by  a  policeman,  causing  him  to  be  paralyzed  from  the  waist 
down.  The  cop  had  been  called  to  the  scene  by  a  middle-aged  white 
woman  who  reported  a  "white  peeping  Tom."  Nevertheless  the  police- 
man shot  the  first  Black  man  he  saw.  The  victim,  who  was  on  probation 
from  prison,  was  sent  back  to  prison  for  violating  parole,  even  though  no 
indictment  was  ever  handed  down  against  him.  The  policeman  was  not 
even  subjected  to  departmental  discipline. 

At  a  fund-raising  party  to  finance  a  drug-abuse  program,  the  middle- 
aged  Black  hostess  was  grabbed  and  hit  by  police  several  times  for 
protesting  harassment  of  departing  guests.  As  the  woman  was  dragged  to 
a  police  van,  her  clothes  were  partially  torn  off.  Two  young  people  at  the 
party  protested  the  beating  and  they  in  turn  were  maced,  beaten  and 
arrested.  The  two  youths  and  the  hostess  were  charged  with  disturbing 
the  peace,  resisting  arrest,  and  assault  on  police. 

A  Commission  for  Racial  Justice  hearing  on  Wilmington  also  re- 
ported the  following  incident:  "While  attending  a  football  game,  a  Black 
youth  leader  observed  an  eight-year-old  being  chased  by  a  group  of  15-18 
white  youths.  After  he  had  successfully  intervened  in  this  fray  to  prevent 
physical  harm  to  the  youth,  two  police  officers  grabbed  the  eight-year- 
old.  While  grabbing  the  eight-year-old,  the  Black  youth  leader  was 
knocked  aside.  When  the  youth  leader  protested  this  treatment,  he  was 
shoved  by  one  of  the  police  officers.  During  this  time,  six  other  officers 
arrived.  Upon  their  arrival  they  joined  the  first  policeman  who  had 
continued  to  beat  on  the  youth  leader.  The  youth  leader  was  arrested  and 
convicted  of  'assault  on  a  policeman'  despite  testimony  from  eight 
witnesses  that  the  youth  leader  was  only  attempting  to  defend  himself. 
The  youth  leader  was  found  guilty  in  District  Court  and  sentenced  to  12 
months." 

Meanwhile  Ben  and  the  BYBBC  found  a  building  on  Castle  Street  in 
the  center  of  the  Black  community  and  moved  in,  with  some  help  from 
the  Commission  for  Racial  Justice.  They  painted  the  building  black.  Ben 
formed  a  church,  the  African  Congregation  of  the  Black  Messiah,  which 
was  affiliated  to  other  Temples  of  the  Black  Messiah  in  Detroit,  New 
York  and  Washington,  D.C.  Wilmington's  Temple  of  the  Black  Messiah 
also  occupied  the  Black  House.  Roderick  Kirby,  the  leader  of  the 
BYBBC,  changed  his  name  to  Kojo  Natambu  and  became  Ben's  assistant 
pastor  at  the  Temple. 

The  Rights  of  White  People  announced  that  it  was  going  to  seek  a 

91 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

military  victory  over  the  Black  community.  ROWP  kingfish  Leroy 
Gibson  challenged  Rev.  Chavis  to  meet  him  in  a  field  outside  of 
Wilmington  to  "fight  to  the  death."  Gibson,  a  sort  of  permanent  loose 
part,  declared:  "If  necessary,  we'll  eliminate  the  Black  race.  What  are  we 
supposed  to  do  while  these  animals  run  loose  in  the  streets?  They'll  either 
abide  by  the  law  or  we'll  wipe  them  out."  Such  a  declaration  was  the 
equivalent  of  shouting  "fire"  in  a  crowded  ghetto. 

Gibson's  next  step  was  to  move  ROWP  headquarters  into  the  Black 
community  on  the  same  block  as  the  Temple  of  the  Black  Messiah,  set  up 
military  command  posts  in  front  and  on  top  of  his  building,  raise  the 
Confederate  flag,  and  conduct  martial  exercises  with  loaded  weapons  in 
the  street.  While  the  ROWP  infested  the  block,  members  of  the  Temple 
were  being  busted  for  jaywalking  and  loitering.  Legal  costs  sapped  the 
church  of  its  meager  funds.  On  Sundays  church  members  were  harassed 
by  ROWP  "soldiers"  and  on  two  occasions  shots  were  fired  into  the 
Temple  during  services. 

One  morning  after  conducting  services,  Rev.  Chavis  left  the  Temple  in 
his  mother's  car.  He  was  riding  in  the  back  seat  with  two  companions; 
three  others  were  in  the  front  seat.  As  they  headed  down  the  street  a 
station  wagon  full  of  white  men  pulled  up  beside  Ben's  car.  One  of  the 
men  in  the  back  seat  drew  out  a  snub-nosed  pistol  and  aimed  it  at  Ben.  All 
of  his  security  men  hit  the  floor,  leaving  him  exposed.  "I  jumped  out  of 
the  car,"  Ben  remembers.  "I  wanted  to  knock  the  gun  out  of  the  guy's 
hand.  I  wasn't  going  to  let  him  shoot  me  just  like  that.  But  when  I  jumped 
out  of  the  car  they  drove  off.  We  gave  chase,  and  although  we  couldn't 
catch  them  we  got  close  enough  to  get  their  license  number.  We  went 
downtown  to  the  police  department  and  reported  the  incident  and  the 
license  number  but  no  arrests  were  ever  made."  (A  year  later  during  the 
trial  of  the  Wilmington  10  the  same  station  wagon  was  parked  each  day  at 
the  Burgaw  courthouse  in  Pender  County.) 

On  August  31  a  delegation  of  whites,  led  by  G.D.  Gross,  Grand 
Cyclops  of  the  Ku  Klux  Klan,  met  with  Wilmington  school  superinten- 
dent Heywood  Bellamy  in  a  last-minute  effort  to  postpone  the  federal 
court  decision  to  desegregate  the  city  schools.  Bellamy  received  them 
with  cordiality  but  explained  that  his  hands  were  tied,  nothing  more 
could  be  done.  That  night  19  school  buses  were  destroyed  by  fire.  Two 
hours  later  the  Klan  burned  a  cross  in  the  yard  of  the  Temple  of  the  Black 
Messiah. 

Police  repression  of  the  Temple  and  the  BYBBC  continued  in  concert 
with  the  vigilante  assaults.  In  October,  Kojo  Natambu  was  arrested  in 
one  of  the  local  schools  when  he  tried  to  prevent  6  policemen  from 

92 


Two 

beating  up  a  10-year-old  Black  student.  The  police  turned  their  attack  on 
Kojo  and  fractured  his  skull.  Kojo  was  arrested  for  assaulting  the 
officers,  convicted  and  sentenced  to  4-6  months  in  prison. 

Leroy  Gibson  addressed  a  ROWP  rally  of  400  armed  men  in  Hugh 
McRae  Park  on  October  3.  On  display  were  numerous  sawed-off 
shotguns,  pump-guns  and  rifles.  He  declared  that  the  ROWP  was  going 
after  Ben  and  Kojo  and  their  followers  and  would  "hunt  them  down  like 
rabbits."  After  the  rally,  50  ROWP  members  approached  the  police 
department  to  volunteer  their  services.  When  the  police  told  them  to  go 
home,  the  vigilantes  went  into  the  Black  community  and  started  shooting 
into  homes.  Police  Chief  H.  E.  Williamson  was  also  offered  500  Klan 
members  by  Grand  Cyclops  Gross  but  Williamson  said  their  help  was  not 
needed  at  present.  The  following  day,  county  officials  put  through  an 
emergency  order  banning  citizens  from  moving  about  with  firearms  for 
the  next  week. 

The  evening  of  October  6  Rev.  Chavis  was  driving  to  the  Hillcrest 
Apartments  where  Kojo  lived.  The  building  had  recently  been  sprayed 
with  bullet  holes  by  the  ROWP  and  a  police  blockade  was  still  posted 
outside.  When  Ben  pulled  up,  a  policeman  stepped  forward  with  his  riot 
shotgun.  The  officer  knew  it  was  Ben  whom  he  had  stopped  and  asked 
him  for  his  license.  Ben  showed  his  wallet  but  when  the  policeman  asked 
for  his  car  registration,  he  was  told  it  was  in  the  trunk.  The  cop  ordered 
Ben  to  stay  in  the  car  and  called  downtown  for  instructions.  Over  the 
radio  came  the  order,  "Bring  him  in."  Ben  was  arrested  for  operating  an 
unregistered  vehicle. 

On  the  ride  downtown  Ben  sat  handcuffed  in  the  back  of  the  police  car. 
The  officer  in  front  clicked  his  shotgun,  put  a  shell  in  the  chamber  and 
leaned  it  in  Ben's  direction  in  back.  During  one  sharp  turn  the  gun  fell  to 
the  floor  but  failed  to  discharge.  At  the  stationhouse  Ben  was  booked  and 
allowed  to  call  attorney  James  Ferguson  in  Charlotte.  Bail  was  set  at 
$350.  Ben  could  have  gone  the  $35  bond  but  refused  and  stayed  in  jail 
instead.  That  night  and  the  next  demonstrators  outside  the  jailhouse 
protested.  After  three  days  Ben  was  brought  before  the  court.  He  told  the 
judge  about  his  registration  card  in  the  trunk  of  the  car,  but  the  judge 
refused  to  listen  and  found  Ben  guilty.  His  car  was  impounded  and  he 
had  to  go  to  Raleigh  to  retrieve  it.  When  he  picked  up  his  car  the  trunk 
was  empty.  While  in  Raleigh  Ben  went  to  the  Department  of  Motor 
Vehicles  for  a  duplicate  registration  card.  He  returned  to  Wilmington, 
card  in  hand,  and  the  judge  reversed  the  verdict  to  "not  guilty." 

Wilmington  fell  quiet  for  the  next  month  but  on  November  10,  the 
anniversary  of  the  1898  massacre,  a  17-year-old  Black  girl  at  Hoggard 

93 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

High  suffered  head  injuries  when  she  was  hit  with  a  chair  thrown  by  a 
white  student.  A  melee  of  200  students  ensued.  The  Hoggard  principal 
called  sheriffs  deputies  who  moved  in  and  beat  and  maced  the  Black 
students.  Several  were  arrested  but  no  whites  were  apprehended. 

The  ROWP  called  another  meeting  at  Hugh  McRae  Park  for  Novem- 
ber 12  but  the  county  declared  another  state  of  emergency,  banning 
transportation  of  firearms  into  the  city  and  preventing  use  of  public 
parks  during  evening  hours.  The  ROWP  moved  its  rally  to  a  city  park  to 
elude  the  county  ruling.  Leroy  Gibson  led  an  armed  motorcade  to  police 
headquarters  to  demand  Chief  Williamson's  resignation  for  being  "too 
soft"  on  Ben  Chavis.  Three  days  later  the  ROWP  violated  the  parks 
curfew.  Forty  ROWP  "soldiers"  were  arrested  but  most  were  released  on 
their  own  recognizance.  ROWP  supporters  held  a  demonstration  at  city 
jail  protesting  the  arrests.  Cars  with  armed  whites  continued  to  patrol  the 
Black  community,  unhindered  by  the  police.  (Only  10  days  before,  two 
young  Black  men  standing  watch  in  front  of  the  Temple  of  the  Black 
Messiah  were  arrested  for  "armed  terror  of  the  populace,"  a  law  on  the 
North  Carolina  statute  books  for  nearly  a  century.)  Gibson  and  the 
ROWP  continued  to  pressure  Williamson  to  jail  Ben  Chavis  or  else  they 
would  make  a  "citizen's  arrest." 

On  December  17, 1971,  the  police  issued  warrants  for  the  arrest  of  Ben 
Chavis,  Molly  Hicks,  her  daughter  Leatrice,  and  a  young  friend  Jerome 
McClain.  They  were  charged  with  "accessory  after  the  fact  of  murder,"  in 
connection  with  the  shooting  of  Clifton  Eugene  Wright  at  the  Hicks 
home  nine  months  earlier. 


94 


Three 


What's  a  tough  guy?  A  guy  with  an  edge — a  bankroll 
in  his  pocket,  a  stripe  on  his  sleeve,  a  rock  in  his  hand,  a 
badge  on  his  shirt — that's  an  edge. 

Orson  Welles  in  Lady  from  Shanghai 

There  are  people  in  our  society  who  should  be  separ- 
ated and  discarded. 

Spiro  Agnew 


I 


F 

X  our  decades  ago,  in  1936,  the  famed  defense  attorney  Clarence 
Darrow  wrote  about  the  art  of  picking  a  jury: 

When  court  opens,  the  bailiff  intones  some  voodoo  singsong  words  in 
ominous  voice  that  carries  fear  and  respect  at  the  opening  of  the  rite.  The 
courtroom  is  full  of  staring  men  and  women  shut  within  closed  doors,  guarded 
by  officials  wearing  uniforms  to  confound  the  simple  inside  the  sacred 
precinct.  This  dispels  all  hope  of  mercy  to  the  unlettered,  the  poor  and 
helpless,  who  scarcely  dare  express  themselves  above  a  whisper  in  any  such 
forbidding  place.  .  .  .  Never  take  a  wealthy  man  on  a  jury.  He  will  convict, 
unless  the  defendant  is  accused  of  violating  the  anti-trust  law,  selling  worth- 
less stocks  or  bonds,  or  something  of  that  kind.  Next  to  the  Board  of  Trade, 
for  him,  the  Penitentiary  is  the  most  important  of  all  public  buildings.  These 
imposing  structures  stand  for  Capitalism.  Civilization  could  not  possibly  exist 
without  them.  Don't  take  a  man  because  he  is  a  "good"  man;  this  means 
nothing.  You  should  find  out  what  he  is  good  for.1 

Harrow's  warning  of  the  class  nature  of  justice  in  the  United  States  is 
as  precise  as  the  crosshairs  on  a  rifle-sight  as  every  courtroom  docket 
shows.  At  a  homecoming  party  after  his  Watergate  indictment,  H.  R. 
Haldeman  and  his  wife  were  described  by  Los  Angeles  civic  leader 
Z.  Wayne  Griffin  as  "an  example  of  what  a  good  American  family  can 
be — well-motivated,  well-mannered,  well-disciplined.  Good  people." 
Good  for  what,  asks  Mr.  Darrow  from  his  grave  of  the  other  guests  at  the 
party,  including  the  chancellor  of  UCLA,  the  president  of  the  Times- 
Mirror  Publishing  Company,  and  former  HEW  Secretary  Robert 
Finch.2 

Three  weeks  after  those  festivities,  several  hundred  judges  including 
six  justices  of  the  state  Supreme  Court,  politicians  including  Mayor-elect 
Abe  Beame,  clergymen,  businessmen,  news  executives  and  lawyers 
gathered  at  New  York's  Biltmore  Hotel  to  honor  attorney  Roy  Conn's  25 
years  as  a  member  of  the  New  York  Bar,  during  which  he  was  indicted  on 
three  separate  occasions  for  conspiracy,  bribery  and  fraud.  Even  as  the 

97 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

ball  was  held,  Mr.  Cohn  was  evading  back  tax  payments  to  the  city. 
Praise  for  the  honored  guest's  years  as  counsel  to  Senator  Joseph 
McCarthy  and  as  prosecutor  of  Julius  and  Ethel  Rosenberg  on  the  road 
to  later  corporate  wealth  was  further  evidence  of  the  by-now  axiomatic 
theory  that  those  with  flag-pins  in  their  lapels  have  stickum  on  their 
fingers.3  Mr.  Cohn  had  just  taken  a  kindred  spirit,  Spiro  Agnew,  to  task, 
in  the  pages  of  The  New  York  Times,  for  making  "a  dumb  mistake 
.  .  .  in  quitting  [the  Vice-Presidency]  and  accepting  a  criminal  convic- 
tion."4 

Cohn  may  have  been  right,  knowing  as  he  does  the  legal  lay  of  the  land. 
Richard  Kleindienst,  former  U.S.  Attorney  General,  for  example,  was 
fined  a  hundred  bucks  for  perjuring  himself  regarding  an  anti-trust  suit 
against  ITT.  The  U.S.  district  judge  in  the  case  said  that  Kleindienst's 
offense  demonstrated  "a  heart  too  loyal  and  considerate  of  others."  For 
Kleindienst,  the  system  works  marvelously:  "There  isn't  another  country 
in  the  world,"  he  said,  "where  persons  situated  in  the  highest  seats  of 
power  would  have  had  the  application  of  justice  as  occurred  here."5 
Meanwhile,  Richard  Nixon,  Godfather  to  Kltinditnsi's  consigliere,  lives 
in  peace  with  dishonor  at  San  Clemente,  not  San  Quentin.  And  a  Nixon 
enforcer  named  William  Calley  was  confined  to  a  Columbus,  Georgia, 
rent-free  apartment  complete  with  lady-love,  a  Mercedes  Benz  sports  car 
and  $17-an-hour  flying  lessons,  for  having  been  found  guilty  of  murder- 
ing 22  women  and  children  by  a  jury  of  his  military  peers.  Support  for  the 
mass  murder  in  his  home  state  was  headed  by  the  then  Governor  and 
Latter  Day  Human  Rights  Saint  Jimmy  Carter.  In  a  domestic  My  Lai,  39 
prisoners  and  prison  guards  were  shot  down  by  state  police  at  Attica 
Correctional  Facility  in  upstate  New  York.  Sixty  other  prisoners  were 
indicted  on  hundreds  of  charges  with  potential  sentences  of  600  years  or 
37  life  terms  each,  while  the  Lord  High  Executioner  went  on  to  become 
Vice  President  of  the  United  States  in  charge  of  domestic  planning 

Crime  in  the  streets,  the  fear  of  which  has  been  so  perfectly  orchestra- 
ted by  the  corporate  media,  is  actually  miniscule  when  compared  to 
crime  eminating  from  the  board  rooms  and  government  suites.  Water- 
gates,  FBI  conspiracies,  and  the  more  spectacular  crimes  in  high  places 
aside,  the  run-of-the-mill  white-collar  crime  wave  dwarfs  street  crime.  In 
the  18  months  between  January  1973  and  June  1974,  for  example,  white- 
collar  crime  by  businessmen  and  government  officials  cost  over  $4 
billion.  In  the  fiscal  year  1973,  fraud  and  embezzlement  took  six  times 
more  money  from  people  than  did  hold-ups  and  burglaries.  Even  FBI 
statistics  show  that  that  $4  billion  loss  was  four  times  the  national  loss 
from  larceny,  burglary  and  theft,  including  auto  theft.6 

98 


Three 

The  toughest  penalties,  however,  were  dealt  to  defendants  without 
means.  Ralph  Nader  cites  the  sentence  of  Spiro  Agnew  to  three  years 
unsupervised  probation  and  a  $10,000  fine  for  failing  to  pay  taxes  on  the 
$13,551  given  to  him  as  bribes,  and  compares  this  to  the  sentencing  a  day 
later  of  a  California  man  to  70  days  in  jail  for  fishing  without  a  license 
and  possessing  seven  striped  bass  under  the  legal  size.7 

In  the  land  of  the  free  enterpriser,  no  one  really  expects  that  the  ruling 
class  would  establish  a  system  of  justice  more  likely  to  penalize  or 
imprison  its  peers  than  its  antagonists.  It  goes  without  saying  that  the 
prisons  are  filled  with  the  poor,  while  the  criminals  with  wealth  are,  if 
caught,  made  to  go  stand  in  a  corner  and  keep  quiet.  In  recent  years,  so- 
called  country-club  prisons  have  been  built  to  lodge  the  influence 
peddlers,  stock  manipulators  and  price  fixers  who  overextend  their 
prerogatives.  The  Allenwood  (Pa.)  federal  facility,  which  housed  second- 
string  Watergate  criminals,  is  surrounded  by  4,250  acres  of  verdant, 
rolling  hills  on  the  southern  fringe  of  the  Allegheny  Mountains.  No  walls, 
fences,  gates,  cells  and  bars  do  these  prisoners  face.  There  are  two  tennis 
courts — one  indoors  and  one  outside,  a  baseball  diamond,  basketball 
courts,  patios,  verandas  with  umbrella  tables,  a  well-stocked  commis- 
sary, telephones,  grassy  courtyards,  liberal  visiting  and  furlough  priv- 
ileges. Jeb  Stuart  Magruder  could  keep  his  tennis  rackets,  sneakers  and 
can  of  balls  alongside  his  bed,  ready  to  get  to  the  courts  for  a  game  or  two 
upon  waking.8 

Nowhere  is  the  class  nature  of  the  criminal  justice  system  felt  so 
sharply  as  in  North  Carolina,  for  nowhere  are  class  distinctions  seen  in 
such  bold  relief  with  an  all-powerful  ruling  group  and  its  working  class 
and  poor  without  organization.  And  nowhere  in  the  United  States  has 
punishment  of  the  poor  been  so  harsh  as  it  has  historically  been  in  the 
Tarheel  state.  In  times  past,  crimes  were  considered  the  work  of  the 
Devil.  The  North  Carolina  Supreme  Court  declared  in  1862,  "To  know 
the  right  and  still  the  wrong  pursue  proceeds  from  a  perverse  will  brought 
about  by  the  seductions  of  the  Evil  One."9  The  Old  Testament  appeal  of 
an  eye  for  an  eye  has  always  brought  a  quicker  response  than  the  New 
Testament  call  for  forgiveness.  Raleigh  News  and  Observer  editor 
Claude  Sitton  suggested  that  "the  amount  of  violence  in  North  Carolina 
has  a  religious  connotation.  Folks  here  believe  in  stern  punishment,  a 
reflection  of  their  Baptist  and  Presbyterian  Protestantism."10  The  case 
has  been  made  more  than  once  that  the  same  ersatz  Christianity  of  the 
Klan  pervades  official  state  criminal  justice  policy.  Bogus  Christians  see 
those  of  different  color  or  persuasion  as  "less  than  Christian."  In  the 

99 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 


"Christian"  order  of  things,  those  who  seek  change  are  spurred  on  by 
"outside  agitators,"  messengers  for  Old  Nick. 


1  hree  days  after  Ben  Chavis  was  indicted  on  the  accessory  charge,  one 
man  of  the  church,  the  Rev.  Norman  Vincent  Peale,  demonstrating  his 
power  of  positive  thinking,  hosted  Richard  Nixon  on  the  president's  1971 
New  York  Christmas  shopping  visit.  In  his  pastoral  prayer  entitled 
"When  Christmas  Comes,"  Dr.  Peale  said,  "O  Lord,  we  ask  thy  great 
blessing  upon  thy  servant,  the  beloved  President  of  the  United  States. 
Undergird  him,  we  beseech  thee,  in  all  the  vast  problems  which  he  must 
consider.  What  a  responsibility  laid  upon  him,  the  future  well-being  of 
the  mass  of  human  beings.  We  thank  thee  that  he  has  become  one  of  the 
truly  great  peacemakers  in  history.  Seldom  if  ever  has  a  world  statesman, 
O  Lord,  fought  for  peace  on  so  wide  a  scale  with  so  dramatic  purposes. 
Just  surround  him  with  your  love,  guide  and  help  him  every  day  in  all 
ways."  Mr.  Nixon,  in  his  practiced  Rotary  Club  luncheon  manner,  was 
reportedly  shyly  pleased  with  the  sermon. 

A  year  earlier,  while  Ben  Chavis  was  organizing  the  Black  community 
of  Granville  County  to  protest  the  Klan  murder  of  Henry  Marrow, 
Attorney  General  John  N.  Mitchell  and  his  wife,  Martha,  were  hosts  at  a 
swinging  100th  birthday  celebration  for  the  usually  staid  Justice  Depart- 
ment. "This  is  repression?"  asked  one  department  official  as  he  drank 
some  of  the  3,100  gallons  of  free  draught  beer  that  was  served  along  with 
4,000  sandwiches,  4,000  chocolate  brownies  and  several  big  birthday 
cakes.  Mitchell,  who  had  once  described  himself  as  "foremost,  a  police 
officer,"  was  a  kindred  spirit  to  Nixon.  "Not  merely  a  chip  off  the  old 
block,"  as  Edmund  Burke  said  of  the  younger  Pitt,  "but  the  old  block 
itself." 

In  the  years  Ben  Chavis  and  Jim  Grant  were  organizing  their  people 
for  equal  education,  for  better  working  conditions,  for  protection  against 
police  violence,  Vice  President  Spiro  Agnew  was  flying  back  and  forth 
across  the  land  calling  for  law  and  order,  returning  home  to  Washington 
and  Baltimore  in  time  each  month  to  receive  his  bag-men  with  their 
bundles  of  cash.  When,  later,  Agnew  precipitately  retired  from  the 
second  highest  office  in  the  country  and  pleaded  no  contest  to  the  same 
charges  that  sent  Al  Capone  to  Alcatraz,  he  received  a  three-year 
probation,  a  $10,000  fine,  a  "Dear  Ted"  letter  from  his  benefactor  in  the 
White  House,  permission  to  keep  the  house  he  furnished  with  criminal 
money,  and  freedom  to  pursue  his  business  interests  in  Greece  and  his 


100 


Three 


six-figure  publisher's  advance,  and  to  play  tennis  with  one  of  his  favorite 
partners,  George  Bush,  then  Republican  Party  national  chairman,  later 
director  of  the  Central  Intelligence  Agency.  Agnew's  pursuit  of  happi- 
ness was  considerably  more  than  was  allowed  to  the  dead  or  mangled 
Kent  State  students  he  called  "bums." 

While  Ben  was  in  Wilmington  preventing  the  slaughter  of  innocents  at 
the  Gregory  Congregational  Church,  Messrs.  Maurice  Stans,  Jeb  Stuart 
Magruder  and  Charles  Colson  were  building  up  the  campaign  treasure 
chest  for  the  Committee  to  Re-Elect  the  President  (CREEP).  Later, 
when  their  illegal  $2  million  gifts  from  the  dairy  monopolies  came  to 
light,  an  administration  apologist,  Treasury  secretary  George  Shultz, 
explained  that  they  took  the  money  to  prevent  lobbying  payoffs  to 
Congress  for  higher  milk  prices.  Preventive  corruption  could  now  take 
its  rightful  place  alongside  preventive  detention  and  preemptive  first 
strike  in  the  Nixonian  lexicon. 

Among  the  preventive  corruptors  of  these  years  of  Ben  Chavis'  coming 
of  political  age  were  Orin  Atkins,  chairman  of  Ashland  Oil;  Harding  L. 
Lawrence,  chairman  of  Braniff  International;  H.  Everett  Olson,  chair- 
man of  Carnation  Dairy  Corporation;  Russell  De  Young  of  Goodyear 
Tire&  Rubber;  and  Thomas  V.  Jones,  chief  executive  of  Northrup.  All 
were  convicted  for  illegal  campaign  contributions,  a  felony  crime.  All 
were  fined  a  thousand  bucks,  except  Jones  who  was  fined  $5,000.  All 
retained  their  same  positions  at  yearly  salaries  ranging  from  $212,500  for 
Olson  to  De  Young's  $350,000. 

Herbert  Kalmbach,  Nixon's  attorney  and  keeper  of  the  $1.9  million 
purse  that  paid  for  the  president's  private  police  force  in  the  years  when 
Ben  Chavis  and  Jim  Grant  were  walking  on  the  "Mountaintop  to  the 
Valley"  march  to  prevent  execution  of  sixteen-year-old  Marie  Hill,  was 
sentenced  to  six  months  for  his  Watergate  crimes.  Six  months  is  less  than 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  poor  people  spend  in  jail  awaiting  trial  on 
minor  charges  of  which  they  are  presumed  innocent.  Kalmbach  told  a 
press  conference  he  had  "renewed  appreciation  and  confidence  in  the 
essential  fairness  of  America's  justice." 

Still  bitter  is  G.  Gordon  Liddy,  who  headed  the  Nixon  secret  police 
team.  Liddy,  a  former  prosecutor  and  federal  narcotics  agent,  believes 
that  Nixon's  error  lay  in  being  "insufficiently  ruthless,"  a  remarkable 
charge  against  a  man  who  ordered  the  deaths  and  permanent  maiming  of 
two  million  Vietnamese,  Cambodians  and  Laotians.  Speaking  of  the 
Watergate  conspiracies,  this  member  of  the  New  York  Bar  argued,  "If 
one  is  engaged  in  a  war,  one  deploys  troops,  one  seeks  to  know  the 
capability  and  intentions  of  the  enemy." 


101 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

These  were  the  men  who  called  each  other  code  names  like  Fat  Jack 
and  Sedan  Chair  and  Ruby  II  while  they  played  their  deadly  games 
during  the  time  Ben  Chavis  was  organizing  garbage  workers  in  Char- 
lotte. They  were  not  bad  men;  none  of  them  ever  burned  down  a  convent. 

In  the  years  1967-1971,  when  Ben  emerged  as  the  leader  of  North 
Carolina's  Black  youth  and  their  parents,  U.S.  Department  of  Defense 
Intelligence  agents  carried  out  illegal  surveillance  actions  against  an 
"estimated  100,000  individuals"  and  a  "similarly  large"  number  of  do- 
mestic organizations,  according  to  the  Senate  Select  Committee  on 
Intelligence  Activities.  Their  targets  included  the  1968  Poor  People's 
March  on  Washington,  every  organization  opposed  to  the  Vietnam  War, 
the  Southern  Christian  Leadership  Conference,  New  York  University, 
Dr.  King,  singers  Arlo  Guthrie  and  Joan  Baez,  Georgia  legislator  Julian 
Bond,  Dr.  Benjamin  Spock  and  Illinois  Senator  Adlai  Stevenson  III.  In 
those  same  years,  Army  intelligence  cooperated  with  local  police  intel- 
ligence units,  as  in  Chicago,  to  finance  and  direct  right-wing  terrorist 
organizations  like  the  Legion  of  Justice,  which  was  unleashed  against  the 
pacifist  Quaker  organization,  the  American  Friends  Service  Committee. 
Few  in  North  Carolina,  one  of  the  most  militaristic  of  states  and  the  one 
with  the  biggest  Department  of  Defense  (DOD)  installations,  would 
wager  that  the  Pentagon  targets  in  those  years  did  not  include  Ben  Chavis 
and  Jim  Grant,  both  associated  with  anti-war  activities,  with  the  South- 
ern Christian  Leadership  Conference  and  the  American  Friends  Service 
Committee. 

While  the  DOD  carried  out  its  illegal  domestic  activities,  its  kin  in 
cloaks-and-daggers  at  the  CIA  were  similarly  engaged.  Under  Presidents 
Johnson  and  Nixon  and  the  direct  supervision  of  agency  director 
Richard  Helms,  the  CIA  implemented  Operation  Chaos  from  1967  to 
1974.  This  plan  which  Helms  later  admitted  exceeded  even  the  agency's 
own  security  interests,  included  the  infiltration  of  spies  and  disrupters 
into  "radical  groups  around  the  country,  particularly  on  the  campuses," 
as  well  as  into  "such  groups  as  the  Women  Strike  for  Peace,  the 
Washington  Peace  Center,  the  Congress  of  Racial  Equality  and  the 
Student  Nonviolent  Coordinating  Committee."  As  the  CIA  went  about 
its  pursuit  of  "national  security"  by  staging  simulated  chemical-warfare 
attacks  on  the  New  York  subway  system,  feeding  LSD  to  unsuspecting 
bar  patrons,  developing  and  hoarding  exotic  poison  gases  from  shellfish 
for  future  mass  extermination  plans,  using  newsmen,  teachers  and  clerics 
as  spies,  overthrowing  the  democratically  elected  government  of  Chile, 
and  meshing  operations  with  organized  crime  syndicates  to  assassinate 
foreign  leaders  and  perhaps  domestic  ones,  Operation  Chaos  gathered 

102 


Three 

information  on  300,000  U.S.  citizens.  As  SNCC  and  CORE  were  targets 
of  the  CIA's  Chaos,  undoubtedly  Ben  Chavis  and  Jim  Grant  were  among 
its  victims. 

The  30  million  television  viewers  who  watched  "The  FBI"  each  week  in 
those  years  never  saw  portrayed  any  of  J.  Edgar  Hoover's  poison  pen 
mail  aimed  at  getting  schoolteachers  fired  and  pitting  wives  against 
husbands.  ABC-TV's  "FBI"  never  showed  the  compilation  of  lists  of 
millions  of  citizens,  with  a  priority  list  of  15,000  to  be  rounded  up  for 
concentration  camps  in  "a  national  emergency."  Nor  was  there  drama- 
tized the  story  of  FBI  informer  Gary  Thomas  Rowe,  Jr.  who  told  the 
Senate  Select  Committee  on  Intelligence  that  the  FBI  condoned  his 
participation  in  acts  of  violence  as  a  member  of  the  Klan  in  the  1960s. 

The  FBI's  acceptance  of  Klan  violence  was  of  a  piece  with  the  entire 
thrust  of  the  Cointelpro  operations  directed  against  the  Black  leadership 
of  the  United  States.  The  FBI's  Cointelpro  (Counterintelligence  Pro- 
gram) found  its  legs  in  provocations  directed  against  the  Communist 
Party,  like  Operation  Hoodwink,  designed  to  incite  organized  crime 
syndicates  to  violently  attack  the  Party.  Cointelpro  operations  expanded 
to  include  disruptions  and  provocations  against  the  Socialist  Workers 
Party  and  the  "New  Left"  and  anti-war  movements.  But  the  main 
Cointelpro  efforts  were  aimed  at  the  Black  communities,  what  J.  Edgar 
Hoover  called  in  his  secret  memos,  "Black  Nationalist-Hate  Groups." 
Hoover,  in  his  Cointelpro  directive,  wrote  that,  "The  purpose  of  this  new 
counterintelligence  endeavor  is  to  expose,  disrupt,  misdirect,  discredit  or 
otherwise  neutralize  the  activities  of  Black  nationalist,  hate-type  organi- 
zations and  groupings,  their  leadership,  spokesmen,  membership  and 
supporters,  and  to  counter  their  propensity  for  violence  and  civil  disor- 
der. . .  No  opportunity  should  be  missed  to  exploit  through  counterin- 
telligence techniques  the  organizational  and  personal  conflicts  of  the 
leadership  of  the  groups  and  where  possible  an  effort  should  be  made  to 
capitalize  upon  existing  conflicts  between  competing  Black  nationalist 
organizations." 

At  the  top  of  Hoover's  list  of  apparent  "Black  Nationalist-Hate 
Groups"  was  the  Rev.  King,  the  Nobel  Peace  Prize  winner.  After 
Hoover's  death,  the  FBI  admitted  to  at  least  25  separate  incidents  of 
bureau  harassment  of  Rev.  King  during  a  six-year  campaign  to  discredit 
the  civil  rights  leader.  The  acknowledged  incidents  do  not  include  the  at 
least  16  illegal  wiretaps  of  King's  home,  offices  and  hotel  rooms,  although 
they  do  include  attempts,  through  poison  pen  letters,  to  induce  Dr.  King 
to  commit  suicide.  This  "vicious  vendetta" — the  words  are  those  of  the 
Senate  Select  Committee  on  Intelligence— did  not  end  with  Dr.  King's 

103 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

murder,  but  continued  with  attempts  to  smear  his  memory  and  harass  his 
widow. 

The  Hoover  memo  was  signed  in  August  1967  and  the  FBI  admits  that 
Cointelpro  activities  against  the  Black  communities  and  their  organiza- 
tions continued  until  at  least  mid-1971.  Those  were  the  years  Ben  Chavis 
came  to  leadership  of  Black  students  in  Charlotte,  Raleigh,  Oxford, 
Warrenton,  Henderson,  Elizabethtown  and  Wilmington,  North  Car- 
olina. (Special  Cointelpro  directives  aimed  against  SCLC,  SNCC  and 
the  Black  Panthers  came  out  of  Hoover's  office  in  the  years  Ben  was 
associated  with  those  organizations.) 

To  the  Nixon  White  House — as  subsequent  investigations  demon- 
strated— every  longhair  football  player,  liberal  news  columnist  and 
Hollywood  peacenik  had  become  enemies.  But  the  Nixon  Justice  De- 
partment and  State  Department  singled  out  certain  "enemies"  for  havoc. 
The  muscle  for  these  operations  was  provided  by  the  Justice  Depart- 
ment's Internal  Security  Division  (ISD),  which  had  been  abeyant  since 
the  height  of  the  Cold  War.  In  1970  the  ISD  was  revived  under  Assistant 
Attorney  General  Robert  Mardian,  Southwest  campaign  manager  for 
Barry  Goldwater's  1964  presidential  quest  and  Nixon's  emissary  to  the 
right-wing  yahoos  of  Arizona  and  the  Southwest.  Before  coming  to  the 
Justice  Department,  Mardian  served  as  chief  counsel  to  Nixon's  Depart- 
ment of  Health,  Education  and  Welfare,  where  he  supervised  the  South- 
ern strategy  and  anti-busing  policies  of  the  Administration. 

Mardian  brought  to  the  ISD  a  hard-nosed  and  heavy-handed 
prosecutorial  bent,  going  after  pacifist  Catholic  priests,  draft  resisters, 
Daniel  Ellsberg  and  Tony  Russo,  Irish  Republican  supporters,  and  all 
other  manner  of  White  House  "enemies."  Mardian  is  said  to  have  told  an 
FBI  agent  that  the  way  he  intended  to  proceed  was  "to  set  up  a  list  of  key 
leaders  and  we  target  them  for  prosecution,  and  we  go  after  them  with 
blanket  coverage  24  hours  a  day  until  we  get  them."  Through  prosecu- 
tions, grand  jury  inquisitions  and  through  cooperation  with  the  FBI, 
Mardian's  ISD  relentlessly  went  about  its  nasty  business. 

A  special  feature  of  the  Mardian  method  was  the  use  of  the  agent 
provocateur.  The  FBI  informer  Robert  Hardy  who  provided  the  skills, 
supplies  and  logistics  for  the  draft  board  raid  by  the  Catholic  pacifists  of 
the  "Camden,  N.J.  28";  the  FBI  informer  Larry  Grathwol,  the  most 
experienced  bomb-maker  for  the  Weather  Underground;  the  FBI  in- 
former William  Lemmer,  advocate  of  bombing  the  1972  Democratic  and 
Republican  conventions  in  Miami  and  chief  witness  against  the  eight 
Vietnam  Veterans  Against  the  War  in  Gainesville,  Fla.  Mardian 
organized  through  similar  personnel  and  tactics  the  prosecution  of  the 

104 


Three 

Harrisburg  8,  Chicago  7,  the  Pentagon  Papers  defendants,  and  the 
Wounded  Knee  cases. 

Mardian  and  his  boss  at  the  Justice  Department,  John  Mitchell,  were 
of  course  themselves  convicted  as  leaders  of  the  Watergate  conspiracy. 
But  while  in  authority  Mardian,  through  his  ISD,  was  a  key  element  of 
the  White  House  police  apparatus,  giving  intelligence  information  on 
political  opponents  to  H.  R.  Haldeman  and  John  Erlichman,  or  to  their 
counterparts  at  the  Committee  to  Re-Elect  the  President.  James  Mc- 
Cord,  Jr.,  CIA  agent  and  convicted  Watergate  burglar  in  charge  of 
CREEP  security,  received  "almost  daily"  reports  from  Mardian's  ISD. 

Mardian  seemed  to  view  civil  liberties  as  a  memorable  phenomenon 
but  happily  a  thing  of  the  past,  like  goldfish  swallowing  or  Cro-Magnon 
man.  His  aggressiveness  at  ISD  was  rewarded  by  Nixon  when  the 
administration  decided  to  "reactivate  the  moribund  Intelligence  Evalua- 
tion Committee  (IEC)  of  the  Department  of  Justice,'*  according  to  the 
report  of  the  Rockefeller  Commission,  "On  CIA  Activities  Within  the 
United  States."  The  Rockefeller  report  concludes:  "The  initial  meeting  of 
the  reconstituted  IEC  occurred  on  December  3,  1970  in  John  Dean's 
office  in  the  Old  Executive  Office  Building.  .  .  .  The  Committee  was 
composed  of  representatives  from  the  Department  of  Justice,  the  FBI, 
the  CIA,  the  Department  of  Defense,  the  Secret  Service  and  the  National 
Security  Agency.  A  representative  of  the  Treasury  Department  was 
i  invited  to  participate  in  the  last  two  IEC  meetings.  The  Chief  of 
|  Counterintelligence  was  the  CIA  representative  on  the  IEC,  and  the 
Chief  of  Operation  Chaos  was  his  alternate."  Mardian  was  chairman  of 
the  IEC,  what  one  critic  dubbed,  "a  sort  of  domestic  war  room,"  which 
met  weekly  on  such  matters  as  "The  Inter-Relationship  of  Black  Power 
Organizations  in  the  Western  Hemisphere." 

The  Rockefeller  Commission  reported:  "The  IEC  was  not  established 
by  Executive  Order.  In  fact,  according  to  minutes  of  the  IEC  meeting  on 
February  1,  1971,  Dean  said  he  favored  avoiding  any  written  directive 
concerning  the  IEC  because  a  directive  'might  create  problems  of 
Congressional  oversight  and  disclosure.'  Several  attempts  were  neverthe- 
less made  to  draft  a  charter  for  the  committee,  although  none  appears  to 
!  have  been  accepted  by  all  of  the  IEC  members.  The  last  draft  which  could 
be  located,  dated  February  10, 1971,  specified  the  'authority'  for  the  IEC 
as  'the  Interdepartmental  Action  Plan  for  Civil  Disturbances,'  something 
which  had  been  issued  in  April  1969  as  the  result  of  an  agreement  between 
the  Attorney  General  and  the  Secretary  of  Defense.  Dean  thought  it  was 
sufficient  just  to  say  that  the  IEC  existed  'by  authority  of  the  President'. 
. . .  [CIA  Director  Richard]  Helms  testified  that  he  understood  that  the 

105 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

IEC  had  been  organized  to  focus  and  coordinate  intelligence  on  domestic 
dissidence." 

Nobody  in  the  IEC  has  ever  divulged  what  its  files  contained  or  where 
the  information  it  obtained  came  from.  Only  one  known  outsider,  from 
the  Senate  Subcommittee  on  Constitutional  Rights,  ever  saw  the  files 
and  he  reported  that  they  included  detailed  dossiers  on  leaders  and 
memberships  of  "movement"  organizations.  One  student  of  criminal 
justice  under  Nixon,  Mitchell  and  Mardian  suggests  that  the  way  the  IEC 
was  set  up,  without  charter  and  without  checks,  indicates  that  it  may 
have  been  a  front  or  intelligence-laundering  operation  for  the  CIA, 
which  is  forbidden  by  law  to  spy  domestically.  That  James  Angleton, 
with  Mardian;  it  seems  Huston  was  more  interested  in  spying,  Mardian 
of  revelations  of  CI  A  domestic  illegalities,  was  the  CIA  representative  on 
the  IEC,  lends  credence  to  this  hypothesis. 

In  1970  while  the  ISD  was  still  going  full-force  under  Mardian,  White 
House  aide  Tom  Charles  Huston  devised  his  now  infamous  plan  for  wire 
tapping,  burglary,  mail  covers  and  other  illegal  activities  under  Oval 
Office  authority.  But  J.  Edgar  Hoover,  pleased  as  Punch  with  his  own 
Cointelpro,  refused  to  go  along  with  the  Huston  Plan,  and  Nixon  was 
forced  to  abandon  it.  After  Hoovefs  veto,  Mardian  asked  Huston  to 
become  his  assistant.  Huston  declined  the  offer  because  of  differences 
with  Mardian;  it  seems  Huston  was  more  interested  in  spying,  Mardian 
with  jailing.  Three  months  later  Mardian  set  up  the  IEC. 

Students  taught  to  believe  the  words  chiseled  into  marble  courthouses 
might  question  Mardian's  fist-in-the-velvet-glove  approach  to  criminal 
justice.  What  right,  they  might  ask,  has  the  government  to  infiltrate,  spy 
on  and  disrupt  the  lives  of  citizens  and  their  organizations  if  that 
government  is  democratic.  Regrettably,  the  answer  would  appear  to  be 
that  government  in  these  United  States  is  not  of  the  people  but  in 
opposition  to  the  people.  It  is  one  thing  to  protect  against  crime,  another 
to  protect  against  political  opposition.  Marxists  of  course  hold  that  any 
government  is  a  superstructure  built  upon  and  representative  of  the 
economic  system  in  which  it  operates.  In  the  United  States,  the  most  fully 
developed  capitalist  system  in  history,  a  "dictatorship"  of  the  capitalist 
class  prevails.  That  is,  all  the  basic  decisions  of  the  society — foreign 
policy,  whether  or  not  to  go  to  war,  expansion  or  restriction  of  the  public 
sector,  austerity  or  spending,  repression  or  relaxation — are  determined 
by  the  interests  of  the  dominant  class  and  its  political  representatives. 
Particularly  in  the  last  40  years  of  U  .S.  history  has  the  role  of  government 
as  arbiter  in  favor  of  capital  become  clear,  first  to  save  the  system  from 
economic  crisis  and  organized  mass  insurgency  in  the  1930s,  then  to 

106 


Three 

transform  the  economy  to  a  permanent  wartime  footing  during  the  1940s, 
the  subsequent  maintenance  of  a  worldwide  army  and  police  force,  and 
the  development  of  the  biggest  police  and  prison  establishment  in  the 
world  since  then.  If  the  economic  structure  is  based  on  "private  enter- 
prise" dominated  by  monopolies,  where  decisions  are  made  for  and  in  the 
interests  of  the  few,  and  the  many — the  workers —  are  excluded  from 
decision-making,  then  the  government  that  is  built  on  that  structure  will 
reflect  those  tendencies.  Only  sustained,  organized  and  united  popular 
movements  are  able  to  force  alterations  in  the  decisions  by  those  in 
power. 

Democratic  gains,  expansions  of  civil  rights  and  civil  liberties  came 
only  after  mass  demands  and  mass  struggle,  often  at  great  sacrifice, 
including  the  sacrifice  of  lives.  This  was  true  in  the  revolution  to  found 
the  United  States,  in  the  wave  of  slave  revolts  and  the  Civil  War,  in  the 
struggle  for  democracy  and  Reconstruction,  in  the  fight  for  economic 
justice  in  the  1930s,  for  civil  liberties  in  the  McCarthy  period  and  for  civil 
rights  in  the  years  that  followed.  Each  of  these  attempts  to  expand 
democracy  were  seen  as  threats  to,  and  treated  as  such  by,  the  economic 
dictatorship  that  prevails. 

In  the  North  Carolina  of  Duke  Power  and  Wachovia  Bank  and  J. P. 
Stevens  and  R.J.Reynolds,  the  civil  rights  movement  of  the  late  1960s 
and  early  1970s,  led  in  large  part  by  Ben  Chavis,  was  perceived  in  much 
the  same  way  as  earlier  labor  struggles  in  Gastonia  and  Winston-Salem 
and  Henderson.  That  movement  was  seen  by  mill  owner  and  banker,  by 
the  "special  interests"  that  control  the  state  government,  by  their  surro- 
gates in  power  intent  on  attracting  still  more  industry  to  the  state,  as  a 
threat  to  their  power.  They  were  determined  to  kill  that  movement  by 
decapitation. 

When  Richard  Nixon  was  elected  president  in  1968,  using  his  "South- 
ern Strategy,"  the  idea  was  to  create  a  "New  Majority,"  to  shatter  the 
traditional  Democratic  Party  base  from  the  New  Deal  days  with 
organized  labor  and  the  Black  population  at  its  core.  The  formerly  "solid 
South"  of  the  Democrats  was  to  be  broken  up;  the  idea  being  that  the 
Democratic  Party  on  a  national  level  was  "too  liberal"  on  the  question  of 
racism,  so  Southern  Democrats  were  asked  to  vote  Republican  in 
national  elections.  In  fact,  this  practice  had  been  in  effect  for  a  number  of 
years  and  the  Democrats  remained  as  ardent  in  the  pursuit  of  Southern 
racist  votes  as  the  Republicans.  But  in  1968,  George  Wallace  as  a 
presidential  candidate  was  a  new  factor  on  the  national  scene.  Nixon  and 
his  campaign  manager,  John  Mitchell,  struck  a  number  of  bargains  with 
Southern  politicians,  promises  to  be  kept  after  the  election. 

107 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

Primary  among  these  deals  was  the  vow  to  maintain  segregated; 
schools.  The  busing  question  was  before  the  federal  courts,  and  Southern 
racists  backed  by  the  White  House  had  agreed  to  block  busing  at  all 
costs.  The  FBI  was  conducting  its  Cointelpro  operations,  in  coordina- 
tion with  other  federal,  state  and  local  police  agencies,  with  the  stated 
goal  of  beheading  any  militant  Black  liberation  movement.  Black  Pan- 
thers were  being  killed,  the  Rev.  King  had  just  been  murdered,  local 
Black  leaders  were  being  sent  to  long  prison  terms  in  virtually  every  state. 
When,  during  the  first  Nixon  term,  with  Mitchell  in  charge  of  Justice  and 
Mardian  his  assistant,  Federal  District  Judge  James  MacMillan  ruled 
that  the  Charlotte-Mecklenburg  school  system  must  desegregate,  by 
busing  if  necessary,  the  implications  were  clear  for  all  of  North  Carolina's 
schools.  Fifteen  years  after  the  U.S.  Supreme  Court  ruled  that  school 
segregation  was  illegal,  North  Carolina,  through  its  largest  school 
district,  was  becoming  the  test  case  on  busing.  White  parents  were 
organized  into  the  Klan  and  the  Rights  of  White  People  to  defy  the  law; 
and  to  create  hysteria  among  whites  and  fear  among  Blacks. 

The  movement  among  Black  students  and  parents  for  equal  education 
grew  spontaneously  in  city  after  city,  village  after  village.  That  movement 
needed  organizers.  Ben  Chavis  and  Jim  Grant  became  the  best  known 
and  the  most  talented  of  these.  As  such,  they  became  targets  number  one 
for  the  repressive  authorities  of  the  state,  acting  in  league  with  the  Nixon 
administration.  In  North  Carolina,  whites  in  government  used  to  wear 
Confederate  flag  pins  in  their  lapels.  Under  the  Nixon  presidency,  they 
changed  to  the  stars  and  stripes.  They  had  come  to  the  belief  that  the  rest 
of  the  country  had  changed  its  mind. 

in  the  eighteenth  century,  racist  fears  of  Black  people  were  somewhat 
allayed  by  the  enactment  of  laws  in  North  Carolina  permitting  castration 
as  punishment  for  sexual  offenses  by  Blacks,  for  striking  a  white  or 
running  away.  In  200  years  the  laws  have  changed  but  the  fears  remain. 
New  Southern  whites  holding  the  reins  of  power  deny  their  racism.; 
Individually,  they  are  capable  of  kind  acts  and  go  to  great  lengths  to 
publicly  display  their  charity  and  good  works,  but  they  are  also  capable 
of  barbarism;  kind  acts  because  they  are  human,  barbarism  because  they 
are  racist.  The  great  fear  of  "Black  power,"  when  push  finally  came  to 
shove,  was  "because  if  they  get  power  they  may  do  to  us  what  we  have 
been  doing  to  them,"  as  one  white  man  admitted  in  a  moment  of  candor. 

Writing  of  another  time  in  another  place,  James  Baldwin  might  well 
have  been  thinking  of  North  Carolina  in  1967-72:  "The  population! 
becomes  more  hostile,  the  situation  more  tense,  and  the  police  force  isj 
increased.  One  day,  to  everyone's  astonishment,  someone  drops  a  match| 

108 


Three 

in  the  powder  keg  and  everything  blows  up.  Before  the  dust  has  settled  or 
the  blood  congealed,  editorials,  speeches  and  civil  rights  commissions  are 
loud  in  the  land,  demanding  to  know  what  happened.  What  happened  is 
that  Negroes  want  to  be  treated  like  men. 

"Negroes  want  to  be  treated  like  men:  a  perfectly  straightforward 
statement,  containing  only  seven  words.  People  who  have  mastered 
Kant,  Hegel,  Shakespeare,  Marx,  Freud,  and  the  Bible  find  this  state- 
ment utterly  impenetrable.  The  idea  seems  to  threaten  profound,  barely 
conscious  assumptions.  A  kind  of  panic  paralyzed  their  features,  as 
though  they  found  themselves  trapped  on  the  edge  of  a  steep  place.'"1 1 

Ben  Chavis'  "problem"  apparently  was  that  he  was  out  of  sync  with  the 
times.  For  most  of  the  South,  the  civil  rights  movement  had  come  and 
gone,  and  was  now  something  of  a  political  hoolahoop.  Civil  rights  were 
viewed  by  most  whites  as  a  once-pressing  moment,  now  long  forgotten, 
like  last  year's  World  Series.  Yet  the  civil  rights  movement  had  for  the 
most  part  passed  North  Carolina  by,  opting  for  the  more  retrograde 
states  of  the  Deep  South.  The  Tarheel  state  was,  after  all,  the  New  South. 
But  now,  in  1971  and  1972,  as  Blacks  entered  state  legislatures  and 
sheriffs  departments,  albeit  in  small  numbers,  in  Alabama  and  Georgia, 
they  were  still  left  waiting  in  North  Carolina.  Little  gray  "Johnny  Reb" 
caps  still  filled  the  curio  shops  of  North  Carolina,  and  "Dixie"  was  still 
standard  fare  at  stockcar  races  and  high-school  assemblies. 

During  the  days  of  McCarthyism  following  World  War  Two,  Commu- 
nists and  other  leftists  of  the  1930s  were  referred  to  as  "premature  anti- 
fascists" for  their  support  of  the  Spanish  Republic  against  the  onslaught 
of  Hitler,  Mussolini  and  Franco  before  it  was  the  current  thing  to  do. 
Perhaps  Ben  Chavis  and  Jim  Grant  would  some  day  be  called  "deferred 
freedom-fighters"  for  taking  up  the  civil  rights  fight  in  the  South  after 
most  of  the  North  was  running  for  cover  as  the  struggle  for  justice  moved 
closer  to  home.  "Civil  rights"  had  again  become  unmentionable  in  polite 
society;  this  year  ecology  was  preferable. 


!  V-/nly  one  week  before  he  was  indicted  on  December  17,  1971,  with 
[I  Molly  and  Leatrice  Hicks  on  the  "accessory  after  the  fact  of  murder" 
ij  charge  in  Wilmington,  Rev.  Chavis  was  indicted  along  with  Jim  Grant  on 
federal  charges  of  conspiracy  to  aid  Al  Hood  and  David  Washington  flee 
the  country  to  avoid  prosecution  on  the  dynamite-possession  rap  in 
Oxford  the  year  before.  Bail  for  Ben  and  Jim  was  set  at  $20,000  each. 
When  the  "Wilmington  Three"  indictments  came  down  seven  days  later, 

109 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

Ben  had  to  post  an  additional  $10,000  bail.  One  month  after  that,  on 
January  30,  1972,  Jim  Grant,  T.  J.  Reddy  and  Charles  Parker  were 
indicted  for  arson  conspiracy  in  Charlotte  around  the  Lazy  B  stable  fire 
four  years  earlier. 

Ben  was  in  Portsmouth,  Virginia,  when  the  news  came  of  the  federal 
indictment.  Still  working  as  field  organizer  for  the  N.C-Virginia  office  of 
the  Commission  for  Racial  Justice,  Ben  was  asked  to  come  to  Ports- 
mouth by  Black  parents  and  students  trying  to  save  the  I.C.  Norcum 
High  School  from  being  closed  down.  In  the  course  of  the  school 
struggle,  other  problems  in  Portsmouth  were  exposed — police  brutality, 
discriminatory  hiring  practices,  and  such.  On  Thanksgiving,  the  Black 
community,  through  Ben,  called  for  a  school  and  merchants  boycott  for 
the  rest  of  the  year. 

Black  students  went  to  school  every  morning  but  not  to  classes. 
Instead  they  held  a  peaceful  picketline,  joined  by  their  parents.  But  the 
police  soon  tired  of  the  daily  demonstrations  and  on  December  10, 
brought  their  canine  squad  to  the  school  and  turned  the  dogs  loose  on  the 
students.  That  night  the  Portsmouth  radio  announced  that  the  police 
were  searching  for  Ben  Chavis,  wanted  in  North  Carolina  for  committing 
a  federal  crime.  Chavis,  said  the  news,  was  a  criminal  fugitive  hiding  in 
Portsmouth. 

Ben  asked  attorney  Ferguson  in  Charlotte  to  meet  him  in  Raleigh 
where  he  would  turn  himself  in.  He  would  travel  to  Raleigh  unan- 
nounced, to  avoid  being  shot  down  by  the  Portsmouth  police,  North 
Carolina  Highway  Patrol  or  vigilante  bounty-hunters  along  the  way.  He 
went  first  to  Norfolk,  grabbed  a  Trailways  bus  to  Raleigh  and  walked 
across  town  to  his  sister  Helen's  home.  Helen  was  then  teaching  at  St. 
Augustine's. 

In  the  morning,  Ben  turned  himself  in  to  the  Alcohol,  Tobacco  and 
Firearms  people  of  the  Treasury  Department  who  were  in  charge  of  the 
case.  Placed  in  handcuffs  and  rushed  before  the  magistrate,  he  was 
charged  with  aiding  the  federal  fugitives  Hood  and  Washington,  and 
with  possession  of  the  illegal  dynamite  which  Hood  and  Washington 
drove  into  the  Oxford  roadblock  18  months  earlier.  Bail  was  set  at 
$20,000  and  the  Commission  for  Racial  Justice  posted  the  $2,000 
security  bond. 

Ben  went  to  New  York  to  discuss  the  case  with  the  Commission's 
national  office  and  its  executive  director,  Dr.  Charles  Cobb.  While  there, 
the  Wilmington  Three  charges  were  announced  on  the  radio.  Chavis  was 
wanted  for  murder,  the  news  said,  for  the  shooting  at  Mrs.  Hicks'  home 
in  March.  Ben  flew  back  to  Wilmington  with  a  Commission  attorney  and 

HQ 


Three 

co-worker  Irv  Joyner,  who  had  prearranged  with  the  local  authorities 
that  Ben  would  turn  himself  in.  At  the  airport,  Kojo  and  other  members 
of  the  Temple  of  the  Black  Messiah  were  on  hand  to  meet  Rev.  Chavis. 
Joining  them  were  several  dozen  New  Hanover  sheriffs  deputies  and 
local  police.  As  Ben  debarked  from  the  plane,  a  detective  read  the 
warrant  to  him,  there  on  the  runway,  and  escorted  him  to  a  waiting  police 
car.  The  cops  did  not  allow  his  attorney  to  ride  with  Ben,  who  was 
hurried  downtown  for  bail  proceedings  and  made  to  post  $10,000  bond. 
The  next  day's  Hanover  Sun  ran  a  banner  headline:  "'Big  Bad'  Ben 
Surrenders." 

After  Christmas  Ben  returned  to  Portsmouth  to  continue  the  boycott. 
The  older  community  leadership  was  cooperating  with  the  young. 
Makeshift  classrooms  were  set  up  in  churches.  The  kids  would  picket  the 
official  schools  in  the  morning  and  study  at  church  in  the  afternoon,  in 
mid-January  1972,  the  police  turned  the  dogs  loose  on  the  students  again. 
Until  then  the  school  boycott  was  about  75  percent  effective,  but  after  the 
police  dogs  bit  the  students,  everybody  walked  out  of  school. 

Ben  would  often  commute  the  four  hours  from  Portsmouth  to 
Wilmington  in  those  days.  On  the  day  when  the  police  dogs  went  after  the 
students  the  second  time,  Jim  Grant  and  Marvin  Patrick  were  with  Ben 
in  Portsmouth.  That  evening,  as  they  pulled  into  a  courtyard  to  drop  off 
some  students  at  home,  they  noticed  an  unmarked  police  car  enter  the 
courtyard  behind  them.  Ben  was  on  the  passenger  side  in  front  and  got 
out  to  approach  the  police.  The  police  demanded  Ben's  driver's  license. 
He  told  them  that  he  wasn't  driving  the  car,  he  didn't  have  to  show  his 
license,  he  had  broken  no  laws,  to  charge  him  if  they  thought  he  had  or 
leave  him  alone.  Two  other  unmarked  police  cars  came  into  the  court- 
yard but  by  then  the  people  who  lived  there  had  come  outside  to  see  what 
was  going  on.  The  police  were  far  out-numbered,  and  got  back  in  their 
cars  and  drove  off. 

Usually  Ben  stayed  in  the  homes  of  various  students  or  church 
members  but,  since  his  friends  from  North  Carolina,  Jim  and  Marvin, 
were  with  him,  he  joined  them  at  the  Holiday  Inn.  Tired  from  the  day's 
events,  they  went  right  to  bed.  They  were  already  asleep  when  the  door 
suddenly  flew  off  its  hinges  and  a  crew  of  police  pushed  into  the  room, 
their  guns  drawn.  The  young  men  were  forced  to  line  up  against  the  wall 
for  a  body  search.  "Can  you  picture  it?"  asked  Ben  later.  "There  we  were, 
naked  or  in  our  underwear,  and  the  police  are  patting  us  down  for 
weapons.  They  got  so  frustrated  that  we  weren't  armed,  they  tore  the 
room  apart  looking  for  guns.  They  brought  a  camera  crew  up  to  the  room 
to  take  mug  shots.  We  hadn't  even  been  busted  yet." 

/// 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

Ben  was  placed  under  arrest— the  others  were  released — for  running  a 
stop  sign,  failing  to  produce  a  driver's  license  when  driving  a  vehicle, 
disorderly  conduct  and  disrupting  the  public  schools.  Four  misde- 
meanors. He  was  handcuffed  and  taken  down  to  jail.  At  the  jail  were 
David  Simmons,  president  of  the  United  Black  Students  Association  in 
Portsmouth,  and  his  mother.  Young  Simmons  was  bleeding  from  the 
head  where  the  police  had  beaten  him.  They  had  gone  into  his  house  and 
dragged  him  out.  He  was  sick  with  flu  and  under  doctor's  care  that  day, 
and  had  not  even  been  in  the  demonstration  at  the  school.  Mrs.  Simmons 
was  also  under  arrest  for  assaulting  a  police  officer.  When  the  police 
came  to  their  home  they  pushed  her  aside  as  she  answered  the  door  and 
knocked  her  down  when  she  blocked  their  path,  hence  the  assault  charge. 
The  Commission  put  up  Ben's  $2,000  bond.  His  trial  was  put  off  to 
August. 

In  February  Ben  decided  to  catch  the  Muhammed  Ali-Joe  Frazier 
fight  on  a  closed-circuit  movie  screen  at  North  Carolina  State  Univer- 
sity's Reynolds  Coliseum  in  Raleigh.  On  his  way  out  of  the  Coliseum 
with  a  friend,  Ben  was  approached  by  a  young  white  man  whom  he  took 
to  be  a  student.  The  stranger  said  something  to  the  effect  of  how  good  the 
fight  was,  Frazier  winning  and  all.  Frazier  had  been  built  up  in  the  press 
as  the  "good  Black  man"  as  opposed  to  the  "militant,"  talkative  Ali.  Ben 
said  he  didn't  think  the  fight  was  all  that  great  but  the  white  man  kept  on 
talking  of  what  a  good  fight  it  was,  and  then,  "Frazier  sure  shut  that 

n  's  mouth."  Ben  turned  on  him  and  told  him  to  shut  up.  The  man 

said,  "I  know  who  you  are.  You're  that  loudmouth  Chavis  and  I'll  shut 
your  mouth  like  Frazier  did  Ali." 

Ben  started  walking  faster  but  the  man  followed  him  outside.  On  the 
sidewalk  the  man  told  Ben  he  was  a  police  officer.  Ben  said  he  didn't 
believe  him  and  told  him  to  get  lost.  Moments  later  as  Ben  reached  his  car 
in  the  parking  lot,  turned  on  the  motor  and  started  to  back  out,  a  half 
dozen  police  cars,  blue  lights  spinning  and  sirens  blaring,  pulled  into  the 
lot.  An  officer  went  to  Ben's  door,  his  gun  in  hand,  pulled  Ben  out  and 
told  him  to  put  his  hands  in  the  air.  He  was  being  arrested  for  assaulting  a 
police  officer.  The  white  man  from  the  Coliseum  appeared  and  Ben  was 
placed  in  handcuffs.  Frank  Ballance,  a  Black  attorney  whom  Ben  had 
known  from  Warrenton,  witnessed  the  arrest  and  followed  Ben  down  to 
the  police  station.  Bond  was  set  at  $500. 

When  the  trial  was  held  three  weeks  later,  Ballance  represented  Ben. 
The  "assaulted"  policeman  admitted  Ben  had  not  touched  him,  but  had 
assaulted  him  "by  fear,"  because  the  cop  thought  Ben  had  a  knife  or  gun. 
When  he  was  forced  under  cross-examination  to  admit  that  Ben  had 


112 


Three 

actually  carried  no  weapon,  he  argued  that  Ben  had  assaulted  him  with 
his  mouth  by  calling  him  names.  The  case  was  dismissed,  although  the 
officer  remained  on  the  Raleigh  police  force.  For  Ben,  his  job  as 
organizer  was  becoming  as  risky  as  a  sack  race  in  a  minefield. 

On  Monday,  February  21,  1971,  Ben  was  in  Charlotte  to  address  a 
Queens  College  symposium.  He  told  the  students  that  "the  system"  in  the 
United  States  was  not  working  for  Black  people,  that  they  had  to  begin 
looking  elsewhere  for  models,  that  some  day  he  hoped  to  go  to  Africa  to 
study  its  liberation  movements  first-hand.  When  District  Judge  C.  H. 
Burnett  in  Wilmington  read  the  news  report  of  Ben's  remarks  in  Char- 
lotte, he  raised  Ben's  bond  in  the  Wilmington  Three  case  from  $10,000  to 
$100,000  on  the  grounds  that  Ben  might  jump  bail  and  flee  to  Africa.  The 
raising  of  bond  came  in  a  preliminary  hearing  to  find  probable  cause  in 
the  case.  Ben  was  now  being  held  for  $100,000  charged  as  an  "accessory 
after  the  fact  of  murder,"  while  Donald  J.  Nixon  who  was  accused  of  the 
murder  itself  was  released  on  $3,000  bond.  Ben  sat  in  jail  for  10  days  while 
his  attorneys  fought  for  a  reduction  of  bond.  When  a  Superior  Court 
judge  finally  brought  it  back  down  to  $15,000,  the  Raleigh  News  and 
Observer  said  the  reduction  "seemingly  indicate[s]  the  change  in  attitude 
in  Wilmington,  which  early  this  year  won  a  special  state  award  for  its 
effectiveness  in  dealing  with  racial  problems." 

Finally  out  of  jail  again,  Ben  flew  to  Gary,  Indiana,  for  the  First  Black 
Political  Assembly,  hosted  by  Mayor  Richard  Hatcher.  Ben  was  a 
spokesman  for  the  North  Carolina  delegation  and  succeeded  in  getting 
the  assembly  to  pass  a  resolution  condemning  the  all-white  Wilmington 
city  government  as  illegal,  due  to  its  uncut  umbilical  cord  stretching  from 
the  1898  massacre.  Since  the  Reconstruction  government  was  forcibly 
overthrown,  not  a  single  Black  had  been  elected  to  the  city  council  or 
county  commission.  The  day  after  the  assembly  adjourned,  March  13, 
Ben  returned  to  Raleigh  and  drove  directly  to  Wilmington. 

As  soon  as  he  crossed  the  bridge  leading  into  town,  police  squad  cars 
began  to  tail  him.  After  picking  up  Marvin  Patrick  at  home,  he  went 
directly  to  the  Temple  of  the  Black  Messiah.  Within  minutes  the  Temple 
was  surrounded  by  police.  Patrol  cars  moved  in,  choreographed  with 
June  Taylor  precision.  Ben  came  outside  to  see  what  the  fuss  was  about, 
and  was  arrested  again,  this  time  for  five  felonies:  burning  with  incendi- 
ary devices,  conspiracy  to  burn  with  incendiary  devices,  assault  on 
emergency  personnel,  conspiracy  to  assault  emergency  personnel,  con- 
spiracy to  commit  murder.  In  Battle  of  Britain  tones,  the  arresting  officer 
told  Ben  that  he  was  being  held  for  the  burning  of  Mike's  Grocery  during 
the  siege  of  the  Gregory  Congregational  Church  13  months  before,  for 

113 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

assaulting  eight  police  officers,  and  for  conspiring  to  murder  Harvey 
Cumber,  the  white  man  who  was  killed  as  he  fired  into  the  church. 

It  was  nearly  midnight  when  they  booked  him  and  set  bond  at  $75,000. 
In  less  than  four  months  Rev.  Chavis  had  been  indicted  for  12  separate 
crimes,  busted  five  times,  and  had  to  post  bond  of  nearly  $200,000.  (This 
brief  record  which  begins  with  the  "accessory  after  the  fact  of  murder" 
arrest,  does  not  include  the  false  arrest  in  Raleigh  after  the  Ali-Frazier 
fight,  nor  several  dozen  arrests  for  parading  without  a  permit  and  other 
misdemeanors  growing  out  of  demonstrations.)  While  he  made  his  one 
phone  call  to  attorney  Ferguson  in  Charlotte,  the  police  brought  in 
Marvin  Patrick,  Connie  Tindall,  James  McCoy,  Jerry  Jacobs,  Willie 
Earl  Vereen  and  Ann  Sheppard.  All  but  Ann  Sheppard  were  high-school 
students,  activists  in  the  Wilmington  school  boycott.  The  same  charges 
brought  against  Ben  were  being  brought  against  Marvin  Patrick.  The 
other  four  students  were  charged  with  arson  and  conspiracy  to  assault 
emergency  personnel.  Ms.  Sheppard  was  charged  with  conspiracy  to 
burn  property  and  conspiracy  to  assault  emergency  personnel.  Four 
other  Black  students  were  arrested  soon  after.  Joe  Wright,  Wayne 
Moore,  George  Kirby  and  Reginald  Epps  were  charged  with  conspiracy 
to  assault  emergency  personnel  and  conspiracy  to  burn  property.  All 
were  placed  under  $50,000  bond  except  Ann  Sheppard  whose  bond  was 
$20,000. 

While  awaiting  a  probable  cause  hearing,  they  were  left  in  the 
Wilmington  jail,  notoriously  filthy  with  rats  and  roaches  ever  present. 
Protests  against  the  conditions  by  the  young  defendants  brought  macing 
and  gassing  of  the  inmates.  Ben  was  gassed  on  three  separate  occasions. 
One  morning  fires  broke  out  and  the  guards  refused  to  extinguish  them, 
leaving  the  prisoners  to  suffer  from  smoke  inhalation  until  they  could 
finally  smother  the  flames. 

On  March  30  the  preliminary  hearing  was  held.  Thousands  of  support- 
ers stood  in  the  streets  in  front  of  the  courthouse.  The  courtroom  was 
packed  with  friends  from  the  Commission  for  Racial  Justice,  the  Temple 
of  the  Black  Messiah,  and  from  East  Arcadia,  Elizabethtown,  Burgaw 
and  even  from  as  far  away  as  Portsmouth.  Again  Judge  Burnett  was 
presiding  over  Ben's  fate.  Their  relationship  was  becoming  as  frequent 
and  monotonous  as  As  the  World  Turns.  The  hearing  proceeded  as 
expected,  except  for  when  the  state's  main  witness  Allen  Hall,  a  former 
mental  patient  being  held  on  unrelated  criminal  charges,  jumped  from 
the  stand  and  lunged  for  Ben  in  an  attempt  to  hit  him.  Eight  deputies 
hustled  Hall  into  a  side  room;  others  surrounded  Ben. 

Predictably,  at  the  end  of  the  hearing  Burnett  bound  the  11  defendants 

114 


Three 


over  for  trial.  Though  they  had  only  had  a  preliminary  hearing  and  not  a 
trial  and  were  presumed  innocent  in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  the  men  and 
woman  were  shackled  in  leg  irons,  waist  chains  and  handcuffs  and 
returned  to  the  Wilmington  jail.  All  were  to  remain  there  for  months  in  a 
form  of  preventive  detention,  awaiting  bail  or  trial. 


Virtually  every  county  prosecutor's  office  in  North  Carolina  is  all- 
white.  In  1976  of  140  district  court  judges,  only  4  were  Black.  Two  of  60 
superior  court  judges  were  Black.  The  9  appellate  court  judges  and  7 
supreme  court  judges  are  all  white.12  Among  the  state's  many  legal 
peculiarities  is  the  absence  of  a  statewide  public  defender's  office, 
although  the  law  allows  the  hiring  of  private  prosecutors;  nor  does  North 
Carolina  allow  for  sentence  review.  A  Black  community  organizer 
accused  of  burning  down  a  barn,  say,  will  draw  25  years  imprisonment, 
while  a  white  man  who  kills  another  will  get  3  to  5  years.  That  Black 
organizer  might  on  appeal  get  a  new  trial  or  a  pardon,  but  he  cannot  win 
a  reduced  sentence  on  the  books. 

Small  wonder  that  prisoners  see  the  judge  who  presides  over  the 
system  of  justice  as  "a  political  henchman  of  political  bosses,"  as  one 
pardoned  former  inmate  testifies.  "After  all,  a  judge  is  a  lawyer  who  may 
or  may  not  have  been  a  success  in  the  practice  of  law.  He  is  appointed  or 
selected  as  a  judge.  If  he  knew  anything  about  crime  and  punishment 
before  assuming  this  powerful  position,  it  was  probably  because  he  had 
been  successful  in  'getting  convictions'  as  a  prosecutor.  In  theory,  every 
man  is  entitled  to  'his  day  in  court.'  The  theory  is  that  he  must  be  proved 
guilty  of  the  crime  with  which  he  is  charged.  The  theory  is  that  the 
prosecutor,  representing  the  'people'  has  the  duty  to  bring  out  all  of  the 
facts — to  get  the  truth.  However,  anyone  who  has  watched  a  prosecutor 
work  will  have  to  admit  that  his  every  word  is  designed  to  'put  the 
prisoner  behind  bars'  and  that  truth  and  the  individual  rights  of  the 
prisoner  are  secondary  considerations  to  what  he  considers  his  prime 
objective  of  'getting  a  conviction.'  "I3 

The  theory  of  equal  justice  under  law,  supposedly  a  national  credo,  in 
reality  cuts  against  the  American  grain,  in  the  phrase  of  Dwight  Mac- 
Donald.  In  North  Carolina,  with  over  one  million  Black  people,  only  100 
Black  lawyers  were  practicing  in  1975.  The  Bar  Board  of  Examiners  had 
no  Blacks,  with  the  result  that  less  than  half  the  Black  law  school 
graduates  ever  passed  the  Bar  exam.  In  1971, 9  out  of  29  Black  graduates 
passed  the  Bar  while  all  of  the  whites  who  took  it  passed.  When  Blacks  do 


115 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

pass,  they  practice  before  predominantly  white  juries.  Even  in  majority 
Black  counties  like  Bertie  County,  Blacks  have  been  permitted  to  serve 
on  juries  only  since  the  1960s;  still  today,  only  20-25  percent  appear  on 
jury  panels  and  even  less  serve  on  the  final  juries.14 

The  racial  composition  of  the  police  departments  is  even  more  unbal- 
anced. In  1972  in  the  city  of  Charlotte  with  a  30  percent  Black  population, 
only  22  of  522  police  officers  were  Black,  none  of  them  in  positions  higher 
than  patrolman,  the  lowest  level  in  the  police  department.15  The  North 
Carolina  Highway  Patrol  included  in  1974  only  18  Black  patrolmen  of  a 
total  of  1,160  or  1.5  percent.16  (Not  one  woman  could  be  found  in  the 
Patrol.)  By  comparison,  the  Alabama  state  police  was  4.5  percent 
Black.17  Colonel  Edward  Jones,  then  chief  of  the  state  patrol,  disclaimed 
racism  in  the  agency:  "Our  Blacks  do  a  good  job.  We  had  only  one  boy 
who  caused  us  problems,"  he  boasted  in  a  tone  reminiscent  of  antebellum 
days  of  yore.18  That  the  daily  random  violence  by  police  and  state 
patrolmen  is  visited  mainly  on  Black  communities  throughout  the  state  is 
not  incidental  to  the  statistics  cited.  The  Charlotte  police  force,  like  its 
brethren  in  other  cities  and  villages,  does  not  discipline  officers  for 
brutality,  only  for  abuse  of  police  standards,  e.g.  being  on  the  take. 

In  1976  Charlotte  Police  Chief  J.C.  Goodman  led  the  fight  against  a 
civilian  review  board.  In  February  of  that  year  a  Black  18-year-old 
Marine  recruit,  Kenneth  M.  Brown,  died  from  blows  landed  by  three 
policemen  brandishing  billy  clubs  in  the  Charlotte  municipal  airport. 
The  NAACP  and  other  community  organizations  called  for  suspension 
of  the  officers  involved  and  the  establishment  of  a  civilian  review  board, 
but  Chief  Goodman  would  have  none  of  it.  "In  police  work,"  said  the 
chief,  "suspension  connotates  something  wrong."  The  setting  up  of  a 
civilian  review  board,  he  argued,  would  destroy  department  morale.19 

A  new  form  of  official  violence  sweeping  the  country,  complete  with 
television  hero-worship,  was  the  SWAT  squad,  which  no  major  city 
prone  to  paramilitarism  could  be  without.  Raleigh's  SWAT  is  known  as 
the  Selective  Enforcement  Unit  (SEU);  its  assignment  is  "strategic 
restraint."  To  selectively  enforce  the  law  and  strategically  restrain  the 
lawbreaker,  the  SEU,  with  all  its  military  hardware,  goes  wherever  it 
cares  to  tread.  In  1976  the  SEU  showed  up  at  high-school  games  where 
violence  off  the  field  was  anticipated,  at  Central  Prison  where  more 
violence  was  anticipated,  at  courthouse  demonstrations  in  support  of 
Joan  Little  where  still  more  violence  was  anticipated.  No  violence  ever 
occurred.  Unanticipated,  violence-wise,  was  a  two-hour  standoff  on 
Raleigh's  Poole  Road  when  a  mental  patient  and  40  police  officers 
exchanged  hundreds  of  shots;  or  the  fatal  collision  in  April  1975  between 

116 


Three 

a  carload  of  teenagers  and  an  unmarked  SEU  car  rushing  to  the  scene  of 
trouble.20 

The  State  Bureau  of  Investigation  (SB1),  North  Carolina  officialdom's 
pride  and  joy  in  law  enforcement,  had  8  Black  agents  of  a  total  260  in 
1974.  This  was  considered  a  great  leap  forward  by  then  bureau  director 
Charles  Dunn  who  assumed  the  job  in  1969  when  there  were  no  Black 
SBI  agents  out  of  a  total  of  57.  Dunn  conceded  that  the  SBI  composition 
created  problems:  "We  have  people  in  law  enforcement  who  shouldn't 
be.  We  have  a  lot  of  sympathizers  with  the  Klan  and  similar  groups,  but 
no  real  activists  among  our  people."21  Since  all  SBI  agents  carry  shotguns 
and  Magnum  .357s,  the  distinction  between  a  Klan  sympathizer  and  an 
activist  is  not  always  easy  to  discern. 

The  SBI  cultivates  its  image  as  crime  buster  as  assiduously  as  its 
federal  counterpart.  One  North  Carolina  crime  victim  was  asked  if  she 
was  afraid.  "Why  should  I  be?"  she  answered,  "1  have  put  my  faith  in  God 
and  in  the  SBI."22  Under  Dunn,  a  political  protege  of  former  Governors 
Luther  Hodges  and  Dan  Moore  and  U.S.  Senator  Robert  Morgan,  the 
SBI  grew  in  five  years  from  an  annual  budget  of  $750,000  to  $4.3  million, 
an  almost  600  percent  increase  in  appropriations.  "Today  our  crime 
laboratory  is  considered  one  of  the  best  in  the  country.  Our  investigators 
are  aggressive  and  as  well  trained  as  any  officers,"  said  Dunn,  as  he 
preached  the  gospel  according  to  St.  J.  Edgar  to  local  church  assem- 
blies.23 When  monies  funded  by  the  U.S.  Justice  Department's  Law 
Enforcement  Assistance  Administration  (LEAA) — which  supplies  SBI 
equipment  and  training — are  included,  the  SBI  budget  was  $6  million.24 
The  LEAA,  which  has  been  called  "the  Justice  Department's  Pen- 
tagon" because  of  its  supplying  of  local  police  with  military  armaments, 
also  has  characteristics  of  a  Justice  Department  Ford  Foundation. 
Established  in  1969  by  a  Nixon  administration  hell-bent  on  law  and 
order,  LEAA  started  with  $63  million  to  help  local  cops  learn  the  new 
war  technology  developed  in  Vietnam,  for  application  now  in  the  ghettos 
I  and  barrios.  By  1971  the  LEAA  budget  had  multiplied  nearly  800  percent, 
to  $480  million.  The  1975  budget  surpassed  a  billion  dollars.  Altogether, 
i|  by  1976  the  LEAA  had  spent  $4.4  billion  in  taxes.  Yet  crime  remained  at 
||  record  levels  and  LEAA  officials  conceded  that  they  "simply  do  not 
j  know  what  works  to  reduce  crime."  One  LEAA  project  was  to  reduce  in 
!  two  years  the  number  of  crimes  in  eight  large  cities  by  5  percent.  For  this 
j  they  spent  $160  million;  the  target  cities  had  an  average  10  percent 
i  increase  in  violent  crimes  and  a  43  percent  increase  overall  at  the  end  of 
the  two  years.25 

In  1972  alone  $400  million  was  spent  by  LEAA  on  developing  still 

117 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

newer  electronic  spying  techniques.  Hidden  surveillance  systems 
monitored  the  streets  around  the  clock  in  a  number  of  cities.  The  now 
convicted  John  Ehrlichman  prepared  for  the  now  pardoned  Richard 
Nixon  a  document,  "Communication  for  Social  Needs,"  which  unfolded 
a  plan  to  require  the  installation  of  FM  receivers  in  every  radio  and  TV 
set,  every  automobile  and  boat,  to  enable  the  government  to  propagand- 
ize at  will  at  any  moment  of  the  day  or  night. 

Other  LEAA  contingency  plans  developed  included  the  training  of 
armies  of  informers,  children  in  the  Boy  Scouts  and  youth  corps,  to  spy 
on  their  own  families;  several  hundred  human  experiments  in  behavior 
control;  the  walling  off  of  so-called  high-crime  areas  which  are  invariably 
those  urban  areas  mainly  populated  by  people  of  color  and  which  do  not 
include  San  Clemente,  the  La  Costa  del  Sol  country  club  in  California 
run  by  the  Teamsters  pension  fund,  or  the  New  York  financial  district; 
the  development  of  SWAT  squads  in  every  burg  from  the  Atlantic  to  the 
Pacific;  the  arming  of  city  cops  with  hollow-nosed  "dum-dum"  bullets, 
outlawed  by  international  law  for  use  in  warfare  but  legal  in  the  United 
States  if  used  by  police  against  the  poor.  Law  and  order  has  become 
lucrative:  Chicago's  and  New  York's  finest  take  in  $100  million  and  $350 
million  respectively,  enough  to  qualify  for  Fortune's  500.  More  than  half 
a  million  people  earn  their  keep  as  coppers  for  40,000  police  departments 
throughout  the  country. 

A  former  LEAA  official,  Martin  Danziger,  asked  whether  all  the 
materiel  being  developed  for  control  of  dissidents  and  protesters  was 
necessary,  replied,  "The  business  community  has  taken  a  substantial 
interest  in  them,  and  I  have  faith  in  their  judgment."26  North  Carolina's 
business  community  was  not  atypical.  From  an  initial  LEAA  outlay  of 
$1,058,000  for  North  Carolina  in  1959,  funding  grew  to  $15,982,000  only 
four  years  later.27  A  typical  LEAA  project  was  the  $300,000  subterranean 
Emergency  Communications  Center  run  by  the  Durham  police  depart- 
ment, with  an  immense  data  bank  wired  into  those  of  the  FBI,  the 
National  Criminal  Information  Center,  National  Law  Enforcement 
Teletype  System  and  Computerized  Criminal  History,  all  federal  police 
networks  also  funded  by  the  LEAA. 

Durham's  police  were  led  by  Chief  Jon  Kindice,  a  graduate  of  the 
International  Police  Academy  (IPA)  and  classmate  there  of  Dan 
Mitrone,  the  fictionalized  character  of  the  movie  State  of  Siege  who,  on 
behalf  of  the  CIA,  trained  the  Uruguayan  police  and  army  in  the 
rudiments  and  subtleties  of  torture  and  counter-insurgency.  Kindice  was 
himself  the  "Public  Safety  Advisor"  in  South  Vietnam's  Quang  Ngai 
Province  after  leaving  the  IPA  in  1967.  Quang  Ngai  encompasses  My 

118 


Three 


Lai,  where  350  civilians  were  massacred  during  Kindice's  tenure.  In  1968 
he  participated  in  the  CIA's  Phoenix  program  to  destroy  the  South 
Vietnam  National  Liberation  Front's  infrastructure  by  assassinating 
more  than  20,000  suspected  local  leaders.  Later  Kindice  became  advisor 
to  the  chief  of  the  Saigon  regime's  National  Police  and  Ministry  of  the 
Interior.  From  Vietnam  Kindice  brought  his  newly  acquired  knowledge 
home  to  California,  where  he  worked  out  of  the  Sacramento  sheriffs 
office  through  which  he  received  riot  control  training  and  other  courses. 
"I  had  a  knack  for  interrogations,"  boasted  Chief  Kindice.28 

The  man  who  hired  Kindice  was  Durham's  Director  of  Public  Safety, 
retired  U.S.  Army  Lieutenant  Colonel  Esai  Berenbaum,  another  former 
Vietnam  officer,  who  taught  the  Green  Berets  at  Ft.  Bragg's  JFK  Center 
for  Special  Warfare.  Still  another  Vietnam  veteran  in  the  leadership  of 
the  Durham  police  was  Lieutenant  Colonel  William  Robbins  (U.S. 
Army,  Ret.),  chief  of  the  department's  auxiliary  services.  Lt.  Col. 
Robbins  served  in  Da  Nang  as  senior  advisor  to  the  Saigon  military's 
prisoner-of-war  camp  for  the  I  Corps  area,  which  includes  Con  Son 
Island,  site  of  the  infamous  tiger-cage  prisons.  Robbins  also  commanded 
the  military  police  battalion  which  manned  the  roadblocks  in  Santo 
Domingo  during  the  1965  U.S.  invasion  of  that  country. 

These  are  the  men  whose  jobs  are  made  more  pleasant  and  manageable 
because  of  ample  funding  and  plans  of  operation  supplied  by  LE  AA.  The 
LEAA  is  itself  directed  at  the  top  and  staffed  on  the  bottom  by  dozens  of 
"former"  CIA  agents  and  retired  military  officers.  A  survey  conducted  by 
the  200,000-member  Retired  Military  Officers  Association  in  1972, 
showed  that  30  percent  of  those  responding  were  now  working  in  federal, 
state  and  local  governments.  Like  General  John  Tolson,  who  moved 
from  commanding  officer  at  Fort  Bragg  to  North  Carolina  Secretary  for 
Military  and  Veterans  Affairs,  the  Kindices,  Berenbaums  and  Robbins's 
who  people  the  local  police  departments,  SBI,  highway  patrol  and 
prisons  are  bringing  "pacification"  home  to  the  Tarheel  state. 


J—/ ate  one  evening,  after  two  more  weeks  in  the  county  jail  and  still 
more  mace  and  gas  attacks  by  the  guards,  Rev.  Ben  Chavis  was  moved 
amid  absolute  secrecy  and  intense  security  precautions,  to  Wake  County 
Jail  in  Raleigh  to  face  trial  with  Jim  Grant  on  the  federal  charges. 
"Federal  marshalls  conducted  the  transfer  with  such  speed,"  reported  the 
Wilmington  Star-News  the  next  day,  "that  officials  of  the  New  Hanover 
Sheriffs  Department  were  not  aware  of  the  move  till  it  took  place." 


119 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

The  hearings  for  pre-trial  motions  gave  more  than  a  hint  of  what  was 
to  come.  Defense  attorney  James  Ferguson  charged  racial  discrimina- 
tion in  the  jury  selection,  pointing  out  that  only  6  of  the  41  potential 
jurors  called  were  Black.  The  clerk's  office  explained  that  the  prospective 
jurors  were  chosen  from  the  voter  registration  lists  of  those  who  had 
voted  in  the  1968  elections,  that  is,  for  Richard  Nixon,  George  Wallace  or 
Hubert  Humphrey.  Many  of  the  counties  from  which  the  jury  lists  were 
picked  were  charged  with  voter  discrimination  under  the  1965  Voting 
Rights  Act.  Ferguson  also  objected,  without  success,  to  the  extraordi- 
nary security  measures  such  as  two-way  radios  in  the  courtroom  and  the 
seating  of  a  marshals  deputy  at  the  defense  counsel  table. 

The  trial  was  peculiar  from  the  start,  even  by  New  Southern  standards. 
Ben  and  J  im  were  on  trial  for  aiding  two  "fugitives,"  and  the  fugitives,  Al 
Hood  and  David  Washington,  were  in  the  courtroom  throughout  the 
trial  free  of  any  charges.  The  "federal  fugitive"  charges  against  them  were 
dropped,  setting  up  a  trial  of  two  men  for  "aiding"  fugitives  who  no 
longer  were  fugitives  in  the  law's  eyes.  During  pre-trial  motions,  charges 
against  Hood  and  Washington  for  possession  of  firearms,  unregistered 
destructive  devices,  and  making  destructive  devices  without  paying  taxes 
on  them  were  dropped,  when  the  government  offered  no  resistance  to 
motions  offered  by  their  defense  attorney.  The  charges  against  Ben  and 
Jim  of  illegal  possession  of  destructive  devices  remained  standing,  even 
though  neither  had  ever  been  found  in  possession  of  such  devices  and  the 
case  originated  with  the  arrest  of  Hood  and  Washington  in  a  car  full  of 
dynamite.  An  underwhelming  case  at  best. 

As  the  trial  developed,  Hood  and  Washington  rather  than  Ben  and  Jim 
were  to  prove  the  key  figures  for  the  proceedings.  The  fix  was  apparent 
from  jump  street.  Hood's  attorney  of  record  was  a  former  U.S.  attorney, 
W.  Arnold  Smith.  Smith  acknowledged  early  on  that  the  federal  govern- 
ment had  been  trying  for  "a  long  time"  to  prosecute  Ben  but  had  not  until 
now  "been  able  to  get  the  goods  up  enough  to  prosecute  him."  A  special 
prosecutor  assigned  to  the  case,  David  Long,  was  formerly  assistant  to 
U.S.  attorney  Warren  H.  Coolidge.  Regarding  the  dropping  of  charges 
against  Hood  and  Washington,  Long  argued  that  the  timing  was  "the 
main  thing"  and  that  it  was  Coolidge's  idea.  Coolidge  refused  to  discuss 
why  the  charges  were  dropped. 

On  the  opening  day  of  the  trial,  Hood  refused  from  the  stand  to  tell 
defense  attorney  Ferguson  where  he  obtained  the  cars  and  money  he  used 
between  September  1970,  when  he  and  Washington  returned  from 
Canada,  and  February  1971,  when  he  was  arrested  in  Charlotte.  "Fm  not 
going  to  tell  you,"  he  answered  Ferguson.  When  Ferguson  pressed  him, 

120 


Three 

Hood  said,  "I  don't  remember."  Ferguson:  "You  don't  remember  what 
anybody  did  but  James  Earl  Grant  and  Ben  Chavis?"  Hood:  "I  remember 
what's  necessary  for  this  case."  Stanley  Noel,  the  Alcohol,  Tobacco  and 
Firearms  agent  who  put  together  the  prosecution's  case  and  who  had,  in 
Ben's  college  days,  monitored  his  anti-war  activities  and  broken  down 
the  door  to  Ben's  apartment,  also  had  a  selectively  faulty  memory.  He 
told  Ferguson  he  couldn't  recall  making  the  statement  that  he  was  going 
to  get  Ben  Chavis  if  it  was  the  last  thing  he  did. 

Later  in  the  trial  Washington  admitted  that  he  lied  initially  in  a 
statement  to  the  FBI  when  he  told  the  bureau  that  the  dynamite  found  in 
his  car  at  the  time  of  his  arrest  belonged  to  Joseph  Goins,  the  third 
passenger.  He  lied,  he  said,  because  he  "wasn't  under  oath"  and  "didn't 
think  [he]  had  to  tell  the  truth."  When  Ferguson  questioned  Washington 
as  to  why  he  had  decided  to  tell  his  story  to  the  authorities,  the  witness 
said  he  was  "tired  of  running"  from  "that  organization."  When  asked  by 
Ferguson  what  "organization,"  Washington  replied,  "That  organization 
that  you  and  Grant  are  in  right  now."  Ferguson  pressed  again  for  an 
answer  and  Washington  said  it  was  "the  same  organization  that  pays  for 
everything  J  im  G  rant  does."  The  exchange  was  cut  short  by  the  judge  and 
the  prosecution  rested  its  case. 

That  was  it.  The  case  against  Ben  and  Jim  rested  entirely  on  the  bizarre 
testimony  of  Hood  and  Washington.  Asserting  their  testimony  was 
"incredible  and  unbelievable,"  the  defense  decided  not  to  call  any 
witnesses.  When  the  verdict  was  returned  it  was  equally  "incredible  and 
unbelievable."  Ben  was  found  not  guilty  on  all  counts,  but  J  im  was  found 
guilty  on  both  counts,  despite  the  fact  that  the  "evidence"  and  testimony 
against  them  were  exactly  the  same. 

After  a  plea  for  leniency  based  on  Jim's  record  of  work  with  VISTA 
and  other  community  projects,  and  the  fact  that  he  had  no  criminal 
record,  the  judge  sentenced  Jim  to  the  maximum  10  years  in  federal 
penitentiary,  5  years  on  each  count  to  run  consecutively.  On  the  day  Ben 
was  found  innocent  of  all  the  federal  charges,  the  New  Hanover  County 
grand  jury  returned  indictments  against  him  and  the  Wilmington  11  on 
the  charges  for  which  he  was  arrested  the  month  before.  He  was  returned 
in  shackles  and  chains  to  New  Hanover  County  Jail. 

Jim's  appeal  bond  was  set  at  $50,000  cash.  The  amount  was  appealed 
to  the  Fourth  Circuit  Court  of  Appeals  which  ordered  the  trial  judge  to 
accept  10  percent  collateral.  Through  the  efforts  of  family  and  friends, 
$5,000  was  raised  and  Jim  was  released  10  weeks  later  on  Friday 
afternoon,  July  7.  Three  days  after  that  he  was  to  be  tried  in  Charlotte  in 
connection  with  the  burning  of  the  Lazy  B  stable. 

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Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 


Hood  and  Washington  would  also  play  the  central  role  in  the  Lazy  B 
trial,  in  which  the  defendants — Jim,  T.  J.  Reddy  and  Charles  Parker- 
would  come  to  be  known  as  the  Charlotte  Three.  Charitably,  one  is 
reminded  of  Humphrey  Bogart's  answer  in  Beat  the  Devil  to  Robert 
Morley's  query  as  to  whether  another  character  was  a  liar.  "Let's  just 
say,"  said  Bogie,  as  we  might  say  of  Hood  and  Washington,  "she  uses  her 
imagination  rather  than  her  memory." 


/~\mid  its  many  Rotarian  boasts,  Tarheel  official  propaganda  holds 
that  "North  Carolina  is  Textiles,"  a  claim  not  far  off  the  mark.  If  you're 
bathing  with  a  North  Carolina  washcloth  in  the  morning,  you've  un- 
doubtedly bedded  down  in  North  Carolina  sheets  and  will  be  dressing  in 
North  Carolina  corduroys  or  denim.  The  textile  companies  are  fast 
becoming  multinationals,  but  textile  manufacturing  is  still  centered  in 
the  U.S.  South  and  the  bulk  of  it  in  North  Carolina.  Of  the  million  textile 
workers  in  the  United  States,  nearly  300,000  work  in  North  Carolina.29 
Although  the  country's  first  cotton  spinning  mill  was  built  in  Rhode 
Island  in  1770  and  New  England  fast  became  the  textile  center  for  the  new 
nation,  Alexander  Hamilton  was  predicting  as  early  as  1775  that  even- 
tually it  would  be  necessary  to  "take  the  cotton  mill  to  the  cotton  field,  to 
move  mills  south  near  the  source  of  raw  materials."  By  the  early 
nineteenth  century  more  textile  goods  were  being  manufactured  in  the 
South  than  being  imported  into  the  region.  In  1810  the  value  of  home 
textile  production  in  North  Carolina  was  $2,989,000  compared  to  Mas- 
sachusetts' $2,219,000.  In  1817  Colonel  Joel  Battle  formed  the  Rocky 
Mount  Manufacturing  Company  on  the  Tar  River.  The  Rocky  Mount 
Mills,  still  operated  by  the  Battle  family,  is  today  the  South's  oldest 
operating  textile  plant.30 

Alexander  Hamilton's  prophecy  and  Colonel  Battle's  faith  were  borne 
out:  North  Carolina  did  indeed  bring  the  mill  to  the  cotton,  with  the 
result  that  half  of  all  U.S.  textiles  are  manufactured  in  the  state.  Textiles 
have  long  dominated  North  Carolina  industry,  accounting  for  just  under 
45  percent  of  all  manufacturing  employment.  31  In  the  Piedmont — the 
central  section  of  the  Carolinas  which  has  historically  been  the  industrial 
belt  of  the  state — manufacturing  employment  often  exceeds  50  percent 
of  the  total  employment,  an  industrial  working-class  concentration  on 
the  level  of  Detroit  and  Pittsburgh.  The  bulk  of  those  blue-collar  workers 
are  in  textiles. 

As  the  Piedmont's  R.J.  Reynolds  is  the  capitalist  world's  largest 


122 


Three 

tobacco  manufacturer,  so  is  Burlington  Industries  the  largest  textile 
company  in  the  capitalist  world.  Its  87  offices,  terminals  and  plants,  and 
its  44,000  workers  in  the  state  make  Burlington  the  largest  single 
industrial  employer  in  North  Carolina.32  With  its  record  $2.1  billion  in 
sales  in  1973,  Burlington's  volume  was  roughly  twice  that  of  each  of  the 
next  three  largest  producers.33  As  Burlington  says,  "that's  a  lot  of 
money."  The  textile  industry  has  its  official  folklore.  According  to 
Burlington  handouts,  back  in  1919,  J.  Spencer  Love  drifted  down  to 
Gastonia,  just  west  of  Charlotte,  from  Boston.  A  22-year-old  Harvard- 
educated  war  veteran,  Love  founded  Burlington  Mills  four  years  later.  A 
man  whose  apparent  enthusiasm  for  cotton  goods  and  textile  profits  was 
bounded  only  by  the  seven  seas,  Love  lifted  Burlington  from  a  company 
with  40  plants  in  three  states  at  the  outbreak  of  World  War  II  to  a 
multinational  firm  during  the  war.  The  corporation  increased  its  sales  by 
166  percent  in  the  course  of  the  war  and  began  to  acquire  plants  in  Cuba 
and  Australia.  The  marvels  of  war  production  are  well  appreciated  in 
Burlington's  board  rooms.  Today  the  company  has  plants  in  Canada, 
Colombia,  Finland,  France,  Italy,  Japan,  Mexico,  South  Africa,  Spain, 
Sweden,  Switzerland,  the  United  Kingdom,  West  Germany  and  Puerto 
Rico. 

J. P.  Stevens  and  Co.,  Inc.,  second  only  to  Burlington  as  a  textile 
monopoly,  with  operations  on  four  continents,  was  started  in  Mas- 
sachusetts in  the  early  nineteenth  century  but  following  the  second  world 
war  moved  South  "in  a  good  way"  because  of  "favorable  economic 
conditions"  and  "good  labor  supply."34  Of  its  83  manufacturing  plants  in 
the  United  States  today,  66  are  in  the  South,  25  in  North  Carolina.  Like 
Burlington,  Stevens  has  a  nose  for  the  larceny  of  war  profiteering.  So 
acute  is  its  smell  that  Robert  T.  Stevens,  former  president  and  chief 
executive  officer  of  the  company,  was  chosen  by  President  Eisenhower  to 
be  his  secretary  of  the  army.  One  needn't  stretch  the  imagination  to  figure 
out  Stevens'  amendment  to  his  Pentagon  chief  Charles  Wilson's  dictum 
that  "What's  good  for  General  Motors  is  good  for  the  country." 

Also  sharing  the  action  in  the  Piedmont  are  Cone  Mills  and  Cannon 
Mills,  both  native  Tarheel  corporations.  Cone,  today  the  world's  largest 
manufacturer  of  denim,  corduroy  and  flannel,  reached  net  sales  of  more 
than  $372  million  in  1972.  Moses  and  Cesar  Cone,  two  traveling  salesmen 
of  dry  goods  riding  the  Southern  circuit  after  the  Civil  War,  having  tasted 
the  beer,  wanted  to  own  the  brewery.  They  built  their  first  manufacturing 
plant  in  Greensboro  in  1895  and  that  city  remains  the  corporate  head- 
quarters for  Cone. 

While  the  Cones  were  traveling  through  the  South,  James  Cannon  was 

123 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

staying  in  one  place— a  general  store  in  Concord,  N.  C,  in  which  he  held 
a  partnership.  Desperate  poverty  gripped  the  area  in  the  wake  of  the  Civil 
War.  Cotton,  known  as  "white  gold"  before  the  war,  had  been  driven 
down  in  price.  Cannon's  idea,  according  to  contemporary  Cannon  Mills 
propagandists,  was  to  open  mills  near  the  source  of  raw  material,  to  spin 
cotton  into  cloth,  thereby  providing  jobs  and  prosperity  for  the  area.35 
Such  charity,  of  course,  began  at  home.  The  result  of  this  private  war  on 
poverty  is  a  present-day  corporation  of  17  plants,  15  in  North  Carolina, 
some  25,000  employees,  and  net  sales  in  1973  of  $355  million. 

North  Carolina's  industrial  revolution  took  place  in  the  Piedmont  for 
several  reasons.  Agriculture  was  far  inferior  here  to  that  of  the  Coastal 
Plain.  And  the  early  mills  required  water-power  sites  more  available  in 
the  hilly  Piedmont  than  on  the  flat  eastern  shores.  Water  is  as  necessary 
to  textile  manufacturing  as  fibers.  After  yarn  is  spun  it  has  to  be  bathed  in 
water  and  starched  to  strengthen  it  for  weaving.  The  needs  of  the  textile 
industry  to  expand  brought  new  techniques.  In  1898  the  first  hydro- 
electric textile  plant  in  North  Carolina  was  built  on  the  Yadkin  River. 
Just  two  years  later,  one  of  every  twenty-five  mills  in  the  state  was  using 
electric  power.  As  W.J.  Cash  wrote  in  The  Mind  of  the  South,  "Under  the 
touch  of  Buck  Duke's  millions,  hydroelectric  power  sprang  into  being, 
and  by  1910  the  energy  of  a  million  horses  was  pulsing  in  the  wires  of 
Dixie.  And  literally  a  hundred  lesser  industries  made  their  appearance. 
By  1914,  and  apart  from  the  cotton  mills,  there  were  at  least  15,000 
manufacturing  establishments  of  one  sort  or  another  in  the  South."36 

In  1905  Duke  organized  the  Southern  Power  Company  with  offices  in 
Charlotte,  as  a  result  of  his  partnership  in  the  Catawba  Power  Company, 
formed  six  years  earlier.  Duke  soon  bought  out  his  partners  and  owned 
Southern  Power  by  himself.  He  had  hoped  to  sell  electric  power  whole- 
sale to  the  Charlotte  Consolidated  Construction  Company  for  re- 
distribution while  selling  directly  to  the  textile  mills.  The  local  company 
balked  at  the  agreement.  Duke,  using  his  personal  philosophy  of  "If  you 
can't  join  'em,  beat  'em,"  acquired  Charlotte  Consolidated.  Southern 
Power  entered  the  retail  market  permanently.  In  1910  Duke  chartered  the 
Piedmont  and  Northern  Railroad,  also  powered  by  electricity,  to  provide 
transportation  for  all  industries  within  the  service  area  of  Southern 
Power.  The  textile  industry  rapidly  expanded  and  soon  finished  cotton 
goods  were  being  shipped  North.37  Duke  raised  most  of  the  two  million 
dollars  needed  to  get  the  Southern  Power  Company  started.  Its  suc- 
cessor, Duke  Power,  now  has  over  two  billion  dollars  in  financial  assets 
and  has  become  the  sixth  biggest  utilities  monopoly  in  the  country. 

If  there  is  joy  in  the  board  rooms  of  Duke  Power,  for  the  paying 

124 


Three 

customers  there  is  nothing  to  cheer  but  cheer  itself.  In  the  six  years 
between  1969  and  1975,  Duke  stiffed  its  customers  with  nine  separate  rate 
hikes.  North  Carolina  is  "the  only  state  that  has  passed  a  law  specifically 
driving  its  Utilities  Commission  toward  basing  rate-making  decisions  on 
economic  predictions,"  which  almost  certainly  means  "unfair  and  higher 
electric,  telephone  and  natural  gas  bills  for  Tar  Heel  customers."  The 
law,  passed  by  the  state  General  Assembly  in  March  1974  was  "heavily 
lobbied  by  the  state's  major  utilities  and  was  written  at  the  suggestion  of  a 
Duke  Power  Co.  vice  president."  The  economic  predictions  on  which 
rates  will  be  based  are  supplied  by  the  power  companies  themselves.  On 
April  29,  1974,  The  News  and  Observer  quoted  Charles  D.  Penuel, 
assistant  vice  president  for  Southern  Bell  Telephone  Company  in  Char- 
lotte says,  "Certainly  North  Carolina  has  the  best  and  most  specific  law 
in  this  regard." 

Duke  power  users  who  paid  $14.72  monthly  in  1970,  paid  $20.50;  Bour 
years  later,  a  jump  of  nearly  40  percent.  Two  more  rate  increases  that 
year  brought  the  rate  rise  to  50  percent  since  1970.  Duke's  profits  for  1975 
were  in  the  neighborhood  of  25  percent,  a  handsome  neighborhood  to 
dwell  in.38  Actually,  profits  are  much  higher  but  hidden  through  a  device 
known  as  "allowance  for  funds  used  during  construction  (AFDC)." 
According  to  Business  Week,  utilities  companies  report  phantom  profits 
through  AFDC,  which  gets  interest  costs  on  new  construction  off  the 
income  statement,  where  they  cut  into  profits.  Duke  Power  reports 
greater  phantom  profits  than  any  other  company  in  the  United  States, 
paying  out  a  dividend  to  investors  which  is  four  times  actual  operating 
earnings.  Duke  dividends  as  a  percent  of  actual  earnings  are  427.3 
percent.39  This  is  nearly  twice  as  high  as  the  next  placed  utilities  company 
in  phantom  profits— Carolina  Power  and  Light  (CP  &  L)  in  eastern 
North  Carolina — with  219.6  percent.  CP  &  L's  phantom  profits,  in  turn, 
were  nearly  twice  that  of  New  York's  Consolidated  Edison  with  its  117.3 
percent.40 

Both  CP  &  L  and  Duke,  of  course,  place  the  burden  of  rate  increases 
on  the  individual  consumer  rather  than  industrial  customers,  a  practice 
not  limited  to  North  Carolina,  but  one  pursued  to  new  frontiers  in  that 
state.  In  1972,  for  example,  residential  customers,  using  only  23.3  percent 
of  Duke's  kilowatt  supplies,  contributed  36.3  percent  of  Duke's  total 
revenues.  Industry  in  the  area,  using  44.8  percent  or  almost  twice  as  much 
electricity,  paid  less  money,  31  percent  of  Duke's  revenues.  Duke  has 
historically  sold  dearly  to  working  people  and  cheaply  to  industry.  Duke 
senior  vice-president  D.W.  Booth  has  said,  "It  has  been  the  policy  of  the 
Duke  Power  Company  since  its  beginning  to  encourage  the  influx  of 

125 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

industry  in  the  Piedmont  Carolina"  through  the  use  of  low  industrial 
rates.  The  practice  was  begun  by  Buck  Duke  himself.  Using  his  tobacco 
profits  to  begin  his  power  company,  he  parlayed  his  winnings  by  also 
investing  in  textile  mills  that  would  locate  in  the  Piedmont  and  use  his 
cheap  electricity.  (In  1974  Duke  Power  owned  59,000  shares  of  J. P. 
Stevens,  worth  some  $1.7  million.)41 

The  growth  of  industrialization  and  electrification  in  this  century  have 
given  North  Carolina  its  New  South  image.  To  achieve  this  growth  took 
and  continues  to  take  large  outlays  of  capital,  in  amounts  only  the  largest 
banks  have  available.  The  banks  in  turn  demand  increased  profits,  even 
though  investment  in  monopolies  such  as  utilities  is  hardly  a  gamble.  In 
effect  the  banks  own  the  power  supply,  and  the  homeowner  or  apart- 
ment-dweller who  pays  his  25  or  30  bucks  a  month  to  the  power 
companies  is  actually  paying  back  the  banks.  In  North  Carolina,  which 
has  been  shown  to  lead  the  nation  in  such  profiteering,  this  is  particularly 
true.  Not  coincidentally,  the  state  contains  the  two  largest  banks  in  the 
South,  to  go  with  its  utilities  and  industrial  giants. 

Dominating  the  Charlotte  skyline  is  the  40-story  glass-sheathed  tower 
of  the  NCNB  Corporation,  the  biggest  banking  concern  in  the  South.42 
The  corporation,  controlling  about  five  billion  in  assets,  is  parent  to  the 
North  Carolina  National  Bank  which  is  chaired  by  Luther  B.  Hodges, 
Jr.,  son  of  the  former  governor.  More  than  size,  NCNB  shares  carry  the 
highest  price-earnings  multiple  of  any  big  bank  in  the  country,  including 
New  York's  Citicorp. 

Until  the  last  decade,  North  Carolina  banking  was  dominated  by  the 
Wachovia  Bank  and  Trust  Company,  with  headquarters  in  Winston- 
Salem.  NCNB  was  formed  in  1960  out  of  a  merger  of  two  other  North 
Carolina  banks  with  the  stated  purpose  of  giving  Wachovia  some 
competition.  In  1973  NCNB  moved  past  Wachovia  in  assets  and  depos- 
its; and  in  the  first  quarter  of  1974  surpassed  Wachovia's  net  income, 
$7.29  million  compared  with  the  latter's  $7.17  million. 

For  the  most  part,  the  ruling  class  of  North  Carolina  provides  a 
textbook  example  of  the  interlocking  directorate.  The  Wachovia  board 
included,  for  example,  William  S.  Smith,  chairman  of  R.J.  Reynolds 
Tobacco  Co.;  while  NCNB's  board  had  the  chairman  of  R.J.  Reynolds 
Industries,  Colin  Stokes.  Similarly,  Burlington  Industries  put  its  chair- 
man, Charles  F.  Meyers,  Jr.,  on  Wachovia's  board;  and  its  executive  vice 
president,  William  A.  Klopman,  on  NCNB's.  Belk  Stores,  the  largest 
retail  store  chain  in  the  South,  also  based  in  Charlotte,  placed  its 
president,  John  M.  Belk,  on  Wachovia's  board,  and  its  executive  vice 
president,  Thomas  M.  Belk  on  the  board  of  NCNB. 

126 


Three 

Such  corporate  incest  gets  more  complex:  Duke  Power  Company's 
board  included,  among  others,  a  RJ.  Reynolds  vice-president  who  was 
also  on  the  board  of  Wachovia  Bank.  Also  on  Duke's  board  was 
Burlington's  finance  committee  chairman,  Howard  Holderness,  who  in 
turn  was  on  the  board  of  Wachovia  Realty  Investments.  Carolina  Power 
and  Light  meanwhile  enjoyed  the  directorship  of  Wachovia's  president, 
John  F.  Watlington,  Jr. 

Running  through  these  corporations  and  banks  of  course  are  represen- 
tatives of  the  Wall  Street  stockholders — Citibank,  Chase  Manhattan, 
Manufacturers  Hanover,  Lehman  Brothers,  Morgan  Guaranty,  and  so 
on.  For  example,  Walter  L.  Lingle,  Jr.,  former  Proctor  and  Gamble 
executive  vice-president,  served  on  the  boards  of  both  Burlington  Indus- 
tries and  R.J.  Reynolds.43 

In  his  classic  work,  Southern  Politics,  V.O.  Key,  Jr.  described  this 
ruling  class  as  a  "progressive  plutocracy,"  a  profit-minded  business  and 
banking  elite  that  favored  industrial  development  and  higher  education 
because  they  were  good  for  business.  The  plutocracy  was  "progressive" 
because  it  brought  a  piece  of  the  South  out  of  the  age  of  the  mint-julep  on 
the  patio  overlooking  the  savannah,  and  into  the  industrial  revolution. 
Hence  the  "New  South." 

The  history  of  North  Carolina's  industrial  development  is  a  classic 
example  of  baronic  rule  with  mill  villages  and  financial  enterprises  run  as 
fiefdoms.  The  city  of  Durham  was  formed  in  the  image  of  Buck  Duke  and 
the  Duke  forture  is  represented  everywhere — Duke  University,  the 
American  Tobacco  Company,  the  Duke  Endowment,  Duke  Power.  In 
Winston-Salem  the  Reynolds  family  dominates  in  a  like  manner.  Bur- 
lington Industries  ran  the  city  of  Burlington  until  the  company  became 
too  big  and  moved  to  Greensboro  which  it  now  helps  run,  while  keeping 
control  of  Burlington  city.  Throughout  the  Piedmont,  villages  sprang  up 
next  to  the  mills,  with  company-owned  shacks  to  house  the  workers  and 
company  stores  to  take  back  their  paychecks  and  then  some. 

Of  course  North  Carolina's  industries  and  banks  went  the  way  of  the 
nation's  capitalism  in  the  1930s  and  1940s.  With  the  Great  Depression 
and  the  inability  of  private  enterprise  to  escape  the  crisis  without  the  help 
of  the  government  apparatus,  there  has  been  a  merging  of  the  state  with 
the  banks  and  industry.  In  North  Carolina  now,  towns  and  villages  are 
no  longer  owned  and  controlled  by  the  companies.  Rather  the  state  and 
local  governments — influenced  by  and  acting  in  the  interests  of  capital — 
manage  the  lives  of  the  people. 

There  is  at  least  one  exception  to  prove  the  rule:  Kannapolis,  imme- 
diately north  of  Charlotte  and  the  eighth  largest  population  center  in 

127 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

North  Carolina.  Situated  on  an  old  cotton  plantation  in  Cabarrus 
County,  Kannapolis  grew  from  the  mill  village  built  by  Cannon  Mills. 
Now  home  for  40,000  people,  Kannapolis  includes  more  than  19  square 
miles  of  residential  sections,  schools,  churches  and  shopping  centers 
surrounding  Cannon's  one-square-mile  manufacturing-shopping-hous- 
ing complex.  The  town  has  installed  a  $5.5  million  sewerage  system,  built 
a  high  school  and  has  a  police  department  nearly  100  men  strong.  But 
Kannapolis  is  not  a  city;  it  is  an  unincorporated  municipality  owned  by 
Cannon  Mills.  The  Kannapolis  police  are  on  the  payroll  of  the  company. 
"Cannon  virtually  runs  Cabarrus  County says  company  Vice  President 
Ed  Rankin.  "We've  got  our  own  representative  in  the  state  General 
Assembly.  And  we  also  have  a  piece  of  Rowan  County."44  Rankin  was 
himself  Governor  Dan  Moore's  director  of  administration,  and  private 
secretary  and  speechwriter  for  governors  William  Umstead  and  Luther 
Hodges. 

If  Kannapolis  is  run  by  Cannon,  and  Durham  and  Winston-Salem  by 
Duke  and  Reynolds,  the  capital  city  of  Raleigh  is  the  province  of  all  the 
corporations  and  banks.  V.O.  Key  wrote  in  1949,  "An  aggressive  aristoc- 
racy of  manufacturing  and  banking,  centered  around  Greensboro, 
Winston-Salem,  Charlotte  and  Durham,  has  had  a  tremendous  stake  in 
state  policy  and  has  not  been  remiss  in  protecting  and  advancing  what  it 
visualizes  as  its  interests.  Consequently  a  sympathetic  respect  for  the 
problems  of  corporate  capital  and  of  large  employers  permeates  the 
state's  politics  and  government.  For  half  a  century  an  economic 
oligarchy  has  held  sway."  As  if  to  verify  the  Marxist  perception  of  "state- 
monopoly  capitalism,"  Key  continued,  "The  effectiveness  of  the 
oligarchy's  control  has  been  achieved  through  the  elevation  to  office  of 
persons  fundamentally  in  harmony  with  its  viewpoint.  Its  interests, 
which  are  often  the  interests  of  the  state,  are  served  without  prompt- 
ing."4* 

Apologists  for  this  ruling  class — Tom  Wicker  of  The  New  York  Times 
has  called  it  "the  Confederate  Mafia"— speak  of  its  paternalism  in 
worshipful  tones  that  evoke  the  expectation  of  background  voices  by  the 
M  ormon  Tabernacle  Choir.  The  Piedmont  of  the  mill  village  was  a  place 
of  shiny  dreams,  the  industrial  counterpart  to  plantation  life.  The 
transfer  of  rule  over  the  lives  of  working  folk  from  private  hands  to  the 
state  apparatus  is  an  experience  still  within  the  memory  of  most  North 
Carolinians.  Much  residue  from  the  good  old  days  remains:  The 
oligarchy  still  talks— like  Citizen  Kane — of  giving  the  people  their  rights 
as  if  it  is  payment  for  services  rendered. 

The  peruser  of  North  Carolina's  corporate  annual  reports  will  discover 

j 

128 


Three 

early  on  that  the  fine  line  between  "community  relations"  and  "public 
relations"  has  been  erased.  Community  relations  programs  are  p.r.  And 
there  is  no  one  so  adept  at  public  relations  as  those  that  rule  North 
Carolina.  Before  the  turn  of  the  century,  Buck  Duke  became  one  of  the 
nation's  biggest  advertisers,  alarming  even  his  business  partners  with  the 
amount  of  money  spent  on  advertising.  Duke  designed  the  "sliding 
package"  for  carrying  tobacco,  the  container  that  became  the  pre- 
decessor of  the  breakfast  cereal  box.  Immigrants  arriving  at  Ellis  Island 
in  New  York  were  given  free  Duke  sample  brands.46 

Public  relations  thus  became  one  of  our  few  native  art  forms  like  jazz, 
handpainted  ties  and  frozen  foods.  In  North  Carolina,  from  the  people 
who  brought  us  "I'd  walk  a  mile  for  a  Camel,"  came  also  the  "New 
South."  A  few  years  ago,  according  to  textile  industry  press  flacks, 
Robert  D.  Walters  of  Burlington  Industries  heard  that  the  Boy  Scouts  of 
America  were  about  to  drop  the  textile  merit  badge  for  lack  of  interest. 
"Walters  disliked  that  so  much  he  almost  single-handedly  mobilized  the 
textile  industry  'to  support  their  own  badge/"  Soliciting  industry  lead- 
ers, the  American  Textile  Manufacturers  Institute  and  Phi  Psi  fraternity, 
Walters  and  his  colleagues  revised  the  "Textile  Merit  Badge  Handbook" 
which,  he  says,  "puts  this  dynamic  industry  in  the  Space  Age  where  it 
belongs."  Since  that  day  when  he  got  "the  stay  of  execution,"  Walters 
says  that  Burlington  alone  awarded  1,500  merit  badges  in  the  Piedmont 
in  1973,  more  than  in  the  rest  of  the  United  States  all  together.47 

Such  good  deeds  are  often  cited  by  corporate  and  state  public  relations 
officers  to  describe  a  ruling  class  whose  purity  of  soul  would  try  the 
patience  of  St.  Francis.  Cone  Mills,  for  example,  distributes  a  12-page 
five-color  brochure,  "What  We're  Doing  About  It,"  meaning  the  com- 
pany's efforts  to  preserve  the  environment,  without  once  mentioning 
byssinosis,  the  "brown  lung"  disease  that  cripples  textile  workers  in 
epidemic  proportions.  Duke  Power  had  a  campaign  to  convince  Pied- 
mont consumers  that  "radioactivity  is  not  a  dirty  word."  Radioactivity,  it 
was  explained,  "exists  in  everything— trees,  flowers,  buildings,  furniture, 
animals,  even  you.  It  always  has.  It's  just  natural."  Without  quite 
suggesting  that  Hiroshima  might  have  qualified  for  a  1945  Model  Cities 
program,  Duke  has  a  program  to  induce  visitors  to  its  Keowee-Toxaway 
nuclear  plant  near  Clemson,  S.C.  There  the  company  has  carved  out  a 
landscape  of  lakes  and  forests  for  nature  lovers  to  enjoy  among  the 
radiation  emissions. 

During  the  Cold  War  days  of  the  1950s,  when  ideological  combat 
against  socialism  jerked  U.S.  school  children  about  on  "free  enterprise" 
prayer  mats,  one  point  that  was  constantly  driven  home  was  that 

129 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

capitalism,  like  radiation  today,  is  "just  natural."  You  are  a  capitalist,  the 
kids  were  told,  if  you  owned  your  own  house,  car,  books,  even  your  own 
pencil.  Like  much  of  the  pedagogical  paraphernalia  that  went  the  way  of 
the  U-2,  Bay  of  Pigs,  Vietnam  and  Watergate,  such  teaching  methods 
have  long  disappeared  from  much  of  the  public  education  system  in  the 
United  States.  But  in  North  Carolina  they,  like  the  atom  bomb  drill,  have 
been  retained.  Public  relations  in  this  least  challenged  corner  of  state- 
monopoly  capitalism  sells  not  just  its  products  but  the  system  itself. 

Backed  by  the  banks  and  corporations,  the  North  Carolina  Legislature 
passed  a  law  in  1974  requiring  all  high  schools  to  give  instruction  in  the 
virtues  of  capitalism.  The  bill  amended  a  1955  law  mandating  instruction 
in  harmful  and  illegal  drugs.  The  new  law  had  bipartisan  backing.  The 
Rev.  Dr.  Billy  Graham,  North  Carolina's  most  famous  clergyman,  has 
never  been  tentative  in  praising  them  that  help  themselves  to  others' 
labor:  "I  would  not  fault  the  wealthy,  for  at  the  death  of  Christ,  it  was  a 
rich  man  who  bought  the  burial  spices  and  assisted  in  the  final  prepara- 
tion of  his  body  for  the  tomb.  I  recognize,  of  course,  that  most  of  his 
disciples  were  not  men  of  material  wealth,  but  Jesus  had  no  implied 
criticism  of  the  wealthy  as  such." 

Duke  Power  continues  to  earn  more  than  its  share  of  profits,  but  its 
carefully  created  image  of  a  company  with  a  heart,  the  Bambi  of  utilities, 
has  been  tarnished.  In  a  recent  special  edition  of  Duke  Power  magazine, 
the  company  describes  the  difficulties  of  winning  the  public:  "For  one 
thing,  Duke  Power  is  a  monopoly.  .  .  .  The  public's  distrust  of  big 
business  in  general  and  monopolies  in  particular,  evidenced  by  the 
growing  strength  of  consumer  activists,  appeared  to  be  an  insurmounta- 
ble obstacle  "  Asked  to  define  the  single  most  improtant  objective  of 

the  company's  advertising  efforts,  one  officer  replied:  "Duke  Power  is 
not  a  monopolistic,  impersonal  corporate  giant . . .  but  a  dedicated  group 
of  friends  and  neighbors  serving  the  public  and  the  future  of  the 
Piedmont  Carolinas."48  Adopting  the  title,  "Your  Friendly  Neighbor- 
hood Power  Company,"  Duke  distributed,  "Hi,  Neighbor"  lapel  but- 
tons, "Welcome,  Neighbor"  doormats,  and  a  45  rpm  record  of  "The 
Duke  Power  Suite." 

New  emphasis  on  selling  "the  system"  itself  came  with  the  consolida- 
tion of  the  merger  between  the  monopoly  corporations  and  the  state 
apparatus  in  the  1930s  and  1940s.  North  Carolina  was,  like  most  of  the 
South,  particularly  desperate  during  the  Great  Depression.  The  New 
Deal  was  looked  to  for  relief  by  the  citizenry.  But  the  growth  of  the 
federal  bureaucracy  under  the  New  Deal,  combined  with  the  transforma- 
tion to  a  permanent  war  economy  following  the  Roosevelt  years, 

130 


Three 


changed  North  Carolina  forever,  perhaps  even  more  than  the  rest  of  the 
country.  Because  the  major  corporations  in  the  state  were  all-powerful 
and  unchecked  by  any  counterveiiing  force,  they  would  control  the  state 
government  more  completely  and  with  fewer  concessions  to  popular 
need  than  elsewhere. 


v^harlotte,  with  250,000  people,  is  the  biggest  city  by  far  in  North 
Carolina,  nearly  twice  the  size  of  Greensboro,  the  state's  second  city.  The 
Queen  City  is  to  North  Carolina  roughly  what  New  York  City  is  to  the 
United  States — the  commercial,  banking  and  cultural  capital,  as  well  as 
the  largest  population  center.  Here  can  be  found  the  home  base  of  Duke 
Power  Company,  the  North  Carolina  National  Bank,  the  American 
Textile  Manufacturers  Institute.  Lying  on  the  South  Carolina  state  line, 
at  the  foot  of  the  hills  that  rise  to  become  the  Great  Smokies,  Charlotte  is 
the  main  overland  shipping  center  in  the  South,  being  an  overnight  drive 
to  the  Gulf  ports  and  the  docks  of  Philadelphia,  New  York  and  Boston. 
The  city  is  important  enough  for  John  Belk,  former  chairman  of  the 
National  Retail  Merchants  Association  and  chairman  of  the  Belk  stores, 
the  largest  privately  owned  chain  of  department  stores  in  the  country 
with  400  stores  in  14  Southeastern  states,  to  have  served  as  mayor. 

Back  in  1965,  a  Black  father  named  James  E.  Swann  led  a  group  of  nine 
other  Black  parents  into  federal  court  in  Charlotte  and  won  an  order  for 
widespread  crosstown  busing  to  desegregate  the  Charlotte-Mecklenburg 
County  school  system.  In  1971  the  United  States  Supreme  Court  upheld 
that  ruling  by  Judge  James  B.  McMillan,  making  the  school  bus  a  legal 
tool  for  desegregating  schools  elsewhere  in  the  country  as  well.  Judge 
McMillan  is  modest  about  his  landmark  decision:  "Heck,  I  was  bused  as 
a  child  in  Robeson  County.  Everybody  who  attends  school  in  North 
Carolina  has  been  bused.  Busing  isn't  the  question,  whatever  folks  say. 
It's  desegregation."  A  young  Black  poet  made  the  same  point.  "It  ain't  the 
bus,  it's  us." 

Anti-busing  rallies  in  1970  in  Charlotte  drew  as  many  as  10,000 
participants.  Within  a  year,  more  than  20  private  "academies"  were 
organized  for  10,000  white  students,  one  of  every  six  white  children  in  the 
county.  The  offices  and  home  of  Julius  Chambers,  NAACP  attorney 
who  brought  the  Swann  suit  (and  partner  of  James  Ferguson,  lawyer  for 
the  Wilmington  10  and  Charlotte  Three)  were  destroyed  by  bombs, 
bused,  and  local  officials  supported  the  attacks.  It  is  instructive  to  study 


131 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finei 

the  words  of  Superior  Court  Judge  Frank  Snepp  spoken  in  1974,  three 
years  after  busing  was  already  an  accomplished  fact,  for  a  reflection  oi 
white  ruling-class  attitudes:  "The  Black  lower  classes,"  Judge  Snepp  told 
an  interviewer,  "have  a  violent  and  raucous  life-style.  They  use  violenl 
language.  A  certain  type  of  Black  is  wont  to  carry  a  knife  as  part  of  a  life- 
style. They  tend  to  feel  that  what  happens  to  them  is  because  they  are 

Black,  not  because  of  what  they've  done  The  NAACP  has  organized 

chapters  in  the  schools  to  act  as  espionage  agents  to  report  anything  thai 
might  be  made  into  a  racial  issue.  Thankfully  the  school  system  has  its 

own  trained  police  department  security  force  Busing  brings  unsavory 

elements  into  the  decent  community.  Little  hoodlums  beat  up  white 
children.  Fve  got  a  young  12-year-old  boy,  a  very  gentle  boy.  Now  that 
he's  in  junior  high  school  he  says  he  hates  Black  people.  .  .  .  White 
students  have  now  begun  carrying  chains  and  knives  to  school.  You  car 
understand  why,  with  so  many  Blacks." 

An  epilogue  to  the  brouhaha  was  provided  on  May  20,  1975,  when 
President  Ford  came  to  Charlotte's  Freedom  Park  for  a  Freedom  Day; 
celebration.  Ford,  who  led  the  mob  against  busing  for  desegration,  as  his 
predecessor  led  the  mob  for  "law  and  order,"  told  the  crowd  of  50,000  61 
"America's  capacity  for  unanimity  and  diversity,  for  courage  in  the  face 
of  challenge,  for  decency  in  the  midst  of  dissention,  for  optimism  in  spite 
of  reverses,  and  for  creativity  in  adaption  to  the  rapidly  changing  world 
in  which  we  live  today.  North  Carolina  is  a  showcase  of  a  state  thai 
reveres  the  values  of  the  past  while  leading  the  way  toward  a  progressive 
future."  During  the  rally,  Mrs.  Billy  Graham  snatched  from  a  young  man 
a  sign  bearing  the  Revolutionary  War  slogan,  "Don't  Tread  On  Me."j  I 

After  a  year  of  trouble  in  the  Charlotte-Mecklenburg  schools,  Jim 
Grant  was  indicted  together  with  T.J.  Reddy,  Charles  Parker  and; 
another  man,  Clarence  Harrison,  on  charges  of  having  burned  down  the 
Lazy  B  stable  in  Charlotte  in  September  1968,  more  than  three  years; 
earlier.  The  Lazy  B  was  the  riding  stable  that  Reddy,  Parker,  Ben  Chavisj 
and  other  students  at  Johnson  C.  Smith  had  integrated  in  1967.  When,  al 
year  after  the  civil  rights  incident,  one  of  the  barns  burned,  killing  15 
horses,  no  mention  of  arson  was  reported  and  no  link  made  between  the 
two  events.  This  was  to  become  one  of  the  oddest  cases  in  a  criminal 
justice  system  noted  for  the  bizarre. 

From  the  beginning,  Jim,  T.J.  Reddy  and  Charles  Parker  were 
perplexed  with  the  indictment  linking  them  to  Clarence  Harrison.  Nonej 
of  them  had  ever  seen  Harrison  nor  even  heard  his  name  before  this] 
When  the  court  read  the  charges  at  the  time  of  pleading,  the  three  men 
said  "not  guilty"  as  expected.  But  Harrison  pleaded  "guilty"  to  burning 

132 


Three 

down  the  stable.  The  presiding  judge,  Frank  Snepp  (of  the  above 
enunciated  view  on  Black  schoolchildren  and  busing)  asked  Harrison  if 
he  was  aware  of  what  he  was  saying  and  if  he  knew  that  the  charge  carried 
a  sentence  of  two  to  thirty  years.  When  Harrison  answered  affirmatively 
to  both  questions,  Judge  Snepp  allowed  him  to  leave  the  courtroom, 
continuing  his  bond  until  the  time  of  sentencing.  No  sooner  had  the 
admittedly  guilty  man  walked  away  when  Snepp  ordered  the  other  three 
men  into  the  sheriffs  custody  for  the  rest  of  the  trial.  The  judge  refused  to 
give  a  reason  for  his  decision  to  revoke  the  bond  of  the  Charlotte  Three. 

During  the  pre-trial  motion  period,  defense  attorney  James  Ferguson 
argued  and  presented  evidence  to  prove  that  in  Charlotte  Black  people 
were  systematically  excluded  from  grand  juries  and  thus  the  grand  jury 
that  indicted  the  Three  was  unfair.  Jury  lists  are  drawn  from  voter 
registration  lists  and,  while  Blacks  in  Mecklenburg  County  were  21 
percent  of  the  population,  they  were  only  14  percent  of  the  registered 
voters.  Snepp  denied  the  motion,  arguing  that  the  "opportunity  (for  jury 
selection)  is  there  if  Blacks  would  register  to  vote." 

Some  25  supporters  of  the  Charlotte  Three  held  a  brief  picket  line 
outside  the  courthouse  on  opening  day.  This  brought  a  court  order  from 
Snepp  forbidding  picketing  or  distributing  handbills  in  the  vicinity  of  the 
courthouse  because  such  actions  "tend  to  influence  or  intimidate"  wit- 
nesses and  members  of  the  jury.  Only  after  some  stern  counseling  in 
constitutional  law  from  federal  judge  James  McMillan  did  Snepp  rescind 
his  order. 

When  the  jury  was  chosen,  it  consisted  of  eleven  whites  and  one  very 
old  Black  woman  who  was  hard  of  hearing  and  said  she  was  employed  "in 
my  white  lady's  house."  The  prosecution  used  its  challenges  to  eliminate 
every  other  prospective  Black  and  Jewish  juror. 

The  case  against  the  Three  was  virtually  nonexistent.  Fire  Department 
District  Chief  K.  D.  Helms,  who  originally  investigated  the  Lazy  B  fire, 
told  of  a  bottle,  presumably  an  arsonist's  weapon,  found  the  day  after  the 
fire  near  another  Lazy  B  barn  that  was  unharmed  by  the  fire.  Helms 
testified  that  he  emptied  the  contents  of  the  bottle  into  a  can  which  he 
sent  to  the  FBI  laboratory  in  Washington,  D.C.,  for  analysis.  The  empty 
bottle  was  given  to  the  Charlotte  Police  laboratory  for  a  fingerprint 
check.  No  fingerprints  were  found  on  the  bottle,  which  Helms  stored  in  a 
closet  after  its  return  from  the  lab.  At  the  time  of  trial,  Helms  could  not 
find  the  bottle  and  had  no  idea  of  its  whereabouts.  The  FBI  analysis  of 
the  bottle's  contents  found  bits  of  solid  matter  similar  to  candle  wax. 
Helms  told  the  court  that  he  found  no  evidence  of  arson  around  the  burnt 
barn. 


133 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

The  state's  case  rested  entirely  on  the  testimony  of  Al  Hood  and  David 
Washington,  who  had  been  the  chief  witnesses  against  Ben  and  J  im  in  the 
federal  case  ten  weeks  before.  Hood  and  Washington  testified  that  they 
had  participated  in  burning  the  Lazy  B  and  attempted  to  link  the  Three  to 
their  act.  At  one  point  Hood  referred  to  the  1967  civil  rights  demonstra- 
tion at  the  stable  but  said  he  thought  it  occurred  in  1968  just  before  the 
fire.  Washington  said  from  the  stand  that  there  was  a  rehearsal  for  the 
arson  in  Biltmore  Park  and  that  T.J.  had  used  a  waterbomb  to  show  what 
he  was  going  to  do  to  the  stable.  Hood,  testifying  to  the  same  incident, 
said  T.J.  used  a  real  bomb  which  exploded  in  the  park.  Hood  also 
admitted  that  he  had  lied  to  law  enforcement  officers  before  and  to 
everybody  else  "at  one  time  or  another."  Washington  was  an  equally 
reliable  witness,  admitting  he  had  been  tried  and  convicted  of  so  many 
crimes  he  couldn't  even  remember  all  of  them.  Asked  "Would  you  lie 
today  if  it  would  benefit  you?"  he  replied,  "I  can't  say  what  I  would  do." 

In  1974  Judge  Snepp,  reflecting  back  over  the  trial  two  years  before, 
told  an  interviewer  that,  "Hood  and  Washington  are  not  exactly  A-l 
citizens  but  they  realized  they  had  to  tell  the  truth."  Whether  or  not  he  is  a 
valid  judge  of  law  is  a  matter  of  dispute  but  Mr.  Snepp  is  clearly  no  judge 
of  character.  Hood  gave  at  least  three  different  versions  on  three  different 
occasions  about  who  made  the  firebombs  used  in  the  Lazy  B  fire.  And 
none  of  his  three  stories  were  in  agreement  with  any  of  Washington's  own 
set  of  conflicting  stories  as  testified  to  in  court,  even  though  both  men 
swore  they  were  present  when  the  bombs  were  made. 

In  court  on  July  12, 1972,  Hood  testified  he  couldn't  see  who  threw  the 

firebombs.  Hood:  "Well,  the  side  that  I  was  on  was  closed  off  I  could 

not  see  the  barn."  Washington,  who  agreed  with  Hood  that  they  were 
standing  next  to  each  other  at  the  time,  swore  in  court  the  same  day  that, 
"Both  doors  to  the  barn  were  open. ...  I  had  a  pretty  good  view  of  the 
inside  of  the  barn." 

As  to  who  made  the  firebombs,  Hood  told  federal  agents  on  July  21, 
1971,  it  had  been  "T.  J.  Reddy  and  Jim  Grant"  and  in  a  separate  statement 
the  same  day,  "T.  J.  Reddy  and  Clarence  Harrison."  To  the  court  a  year 
later,  July  12, 1972,  Hood  said  it  had  been  "T.  J.  Reddy,  Charles  Parker, 
possibly  Clarence  Harrison."  Washington  was  equally  at  variance  with 
himself.  In  two  separate  statements  on  July  12, 1971,  he  said,  "I  saw  T.J. 
(only),"  and  later  "Grant  and  T.J.  Reddy."  In  court  a  year  later  Wash- 
ington fingered  Jim  Grant  alone. 

When  the  state  finished  presenting  its  case,  the  jury  had  to  consider  the 
sole  evidence  that  a  fire  had  occurred  four  years  earlier  and  two 
criminals,  who  were  not  charged  with  the  crime,  had  admitted  commit- 

134 


Three 

ting  the  crime  along  with  the  defendants  on  trial.  The  jury  never  heard 
mention  of  the  fact  that  Clarence  Harrison  had  also  been  charged  and 
had  already  pleaded  guilty  to  the  charge. 

Among  defense  witnesses  were  Joe  Hahn,  a  Pennsylvania  philatelist  at 
whose  home  in  State  College,  Pa.,  Jim  was  staying  at  the  time  of  the 
alleged  arson;  Andrew  Brown,  a  Penn  State  student  when  Jim  was  in 
graduate  school,  whom  Jim  visited  on  the  night  the  state  of  North 
Carolina  claimed  he  was  out  tossing  bombs  at  a  barn  in  Charlotte; 
Brown's  college  roommate,  Phil  Coleman,  who  verified  the  testimony  of 
the  visit;  and  Professor  Wells  Keddie  of  Penn  State,  whom  Jim  met  with 
in  the  afternoon  of  the  day  of  the  fire.  Keddie  brought  his  1968  appoint- 
ment calendar  with  him  to  court. 

The  prosecution's  response  was  to  attempt  to  discredit  the  witnesses. 
Hahn,  for  example,  was  accused  of  being  "a  card-carrying  member  of  the 
American  Civil  Liberties  Union."  Brown,  who  is  Black,  was  asked  what 
"Black-oriented  or  other  militant  organizations"  he  belonged  to.  And  as 
with  the  other  witnesses,  he  was  questioned  as  to  whether  he  belonged  to 
"The  Marxist  Study  Club",  "The  Pennsylvania  Socialist  Society"  and 
other  nonexistent  organizations. 

Character  witnesses  for  T.J.  Reddy  were  all  known  and  respected 
Charlotte  citizens.  The  prosecution  spared  them  no  less  than  Jim's 
university  associates.  Dr.  Robert  Miller,  for  example,  was  asked  if  he 
hadn't  attended  a  conference  in  Chicago  which  opposed  the  Vietnam 
War  and  supported  Black  power.  "Yes,"  Dr.  Miller  responded,  "that  was 
a  conference  of  the  Lutheran  Church." 

Despite  the  weakness  of  the  prosecution  case,  the  verdict,  given  the 
time,  place  and  circumstances,  came  down  with  the  inevitability  of 
nightfall.  The  Charlotte  Three  were  pronounced  "guilty  as  charged." 
Judge  Snepp,  pleased  with  the  verdict,  proceeded  to  deliver  to  the 
defendants  a  sermon  stuffed  with  homilies  as  stale  as  leftover  cornbread. 
In  announcing  the  astonishingly  severe  sentences  of  25  years  for  Jim 
Grant,  20  for  T.J.  Reddy  and  10  years  for  Charles  Parker,  Snepp 
described  the  stable  burning  as  "One  of  the  most  inhuman  crimes  I  have 
ever  heard  of,"  referring  to  the  horses  killed  in  the  stable  fire.  Less 
inhuman  apparently,  in  the  eyes  of  the  North  Carolina  courts,  were  the 
burning  in  1965  of  a  Mt.  Airy  store  in  which  an  employee  was  killed  by  a 
businessman  who  received  only  5-8  years;  the  firebombing  of  a  Charlotte 
grocery  store  one  month  after  the  Lazy  B  fire  by  a  white  man  who  was 
sentenced  to  3-5  years  with  a  recommendation  of  work  release;  the 
burning  of  a  home  in  which  his  ex-wife  was  living  by  a  Charlotte  man 
who  got  4-5  years;  the  burning  of  three  Hendersonville  schools  by  a 

135 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

white  volunteer  fireman  who  received  5-10  years  in  December  1971,  a 
month  before  the  Charlotte  Three  indictments  were  handed  down;  the 
burning  of  six  barns  in  Mecklenburg  and  Cabarrus  counties  by  four 
white  youths  who  were  given  sentences  ranging  from  8  months  to  2  years. 
In  fact,  in  the  ten-year  period  of  1965-74  only  one  burning  case  drew 
harsher  sentences  than  that  of  the  Charlotte  Three,  and  that  was  for 
seven  separate  cases  of  arson  by  the  same  person.  Wrote  Washington 
Post  columnist  Coleman  McCarthy,  "When  compared  to  the  20  years 
Lt.  William  Calley  (who  now  walks  free)  got  for  murdering  22  Viet- 
namese civilians,  the  severity  [of  sentencing]  is  even  more  striking. 
Fifteen  horses  in  Charlotte  are  apparently  worth  more  than  22  human 
beings  in  My  Lai." 

As  for  the  admitted  Lazy  B  arsonists,  Hood  and  Washington  were  of 
course  never  tried  for  the  crime;  Clarence  Harrison  was  sentenced  to  7 
years,  5  of  them  suspended.  Judge  Snepp,  in  explaining  the  harshness  of 
the  sentences  for  the  Three,  said  they  were  beyond  rehabilitation  because 
they  "are  educated  men."  Nevertheless  he  distinguished  between  Charles 
Parker  whom  Snepp  viewed  as  an  impressionable  dupe,  and  Jim  Grant 
whom  he  considered  an  "organizer  and  leader."  Snepp  called  T.J.  Reddy 
"a  man  of  promise,  of  talent,"  but  said  the  talent  had  been  misdirected.  It 
was  as  if  T.J.  had  wandered  into  church,  made  a  sacrilegious  joke  and 
now  the  priest  was  trying,  ever  so  patiently,  to  set  him  straight.  He 
accused  Reddy  of  being  able  to  mold  people's  minds  and  scolded  him  for 
doing  so  to  bad  ends.  Later,  writing  from  prison,  T.J.  wrote  his  "Judge 
Poem." 

.  .  .  .Judge  says  he  thinks  I  am  intelligent,  creative 
Said  I  had  a  future 

But  since  those  voodoo  dolls  keep  looming  in  his  mind 

And  his  fears  keep  mounting 

Judge  Snepp  snips  snaps  at  my  heart 

Labels  me  tactician,  conspirator,  overeducated  revolutionary 

Beyond  rehabilitation 

Gives  me  a  20-year  sentence 

And  allows  those  who  confess  to  the  crime 

We  are  accused  of 

To  escape  prosecution 

Judge  deals  with  life 

In  terms  of  lovelessness 

My  only  crime  is  my  love  of  freedom 

the  color  of  my  skin 

136 


Three 

But  in  America's  courtrooms 

I  am  left  at  the  mercy  of  laws 

Designed  to  try  me  into  submission 

But  I  cannot  live  your  lies,  judge 

I  can't  smile  while  you  heap  racist  laws  on  me 

And  have  you  expect  me  to  be  grateful  for  them 

Judge  said  I  am  something  of  a  romantic 

And,  yes,  I  confess  I  am 

I  love  life,  I  love  love 

And  I  am  romantic  minded 

Knowing  that  in  the  midst 

Of  all  the  hatred  and  death 

My  love  of  life  is  all  I  have  left 

(From  Less  Than  a  Score,  But  a  Point:  Poems  by  T.  J.  Reddy,  Random 
House,  New  York,  1974.) 


137 


Four 

If  the  poor  are  too  well  off  they  will  be  disorderly — 

Cardinal  Richelieu 


j  n  1924  Buck  Duke  left  the  Duke  Endowment  as  his  legacy  to  attract 
industry  to  North  Carolina.  Thirty  years  later  the  state's  first  self- 
proclaimed  "businessman  in  the  statehouse,"  Governor  Luther  Hodges, 
made  industry-hunting  the  first  priority  of  the  state  government.  An 
entire  division  of  commerce  and  industry  in  the  state's  Department  of 
Natural  and  Economic  Resources  is  now  devoted  to  industry-hunting, 
working  with  and  complementing  the  efforts  of  the  local  entrepreneurs 
and  Chambers  of  Commerce  and  the  industry-hunters  for  Duke  Power, 
CP  &  L  and  the  banks.  In  1973,  for  example,  104  new  plants,  representing 
an  investment  of  $267  million,  were  brought  into  the  state.1  An  addi- 
tional $200  million  was  invested  in  existing  plants.  A  quarter  of  the  total 
new  investment  came  in  textiles  and  lumber,  as  did  half  the  new  plants 
and  two-fifths  of  the  new  employees.  But  45  percent  of  the  new  invest- 
ments were  in  chemical,  plastics  and  rubber  plants.2  Moreover  80  percent 
of  the  new  industrial  plants  were  outside  the  Piedmont,  the  bulk  in  the 
traditionally  agrarian  East. 

This  development  is  according  to  plan.  North  Carolina  is  the  12th  state 
in  the  country  in  population.  All  the  first  1 1  have  large  urban  areas.  North 
Carolina  has  only  four  cities  with  more  than  100,000  people  and  only  one, 
Charlotte,  with  a  quarter-million.  Official  state  statistics  consider  con- 
centrations of  2,500  persons  or  more  as  "urban  areas."  The  "Statewide 
Development  Policy"  prepared  under  Governor  Robert  Scott  in  1972 
saw  "the  growth  of  smaller  centers  of  population"  as  its  "primary 
objective."  Growth  in  "places  which  were  closest  to  where  people  needed 
jobs  if  they  were  to  remain"  in  North  Carolina  became  "the  basis  for  all 
investment  planning  efforts."  The  trend,  planned  by  the  state  in  coopera- 
tion with  the  corporations,  is  for  a  decentralization  of  manufacturing 
employment,  dispersed  to  increasingly  smaller  population  centers.3 

This  policy— increasing  industrialization  by  keeping  people  on  the 
farms — seems  illogical  as  a  flight  of  fleas.  But  inherent  in  the  plan  is  the 
great  obsession  of  those  who  make  policy  for  North  Carolina — prevent- 
ing the  organization  of  its  workers. 


141 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

"Our  main  selling  point  is  good  labor,"  says  the  man  whose  job  for 
Duke  Power  is  to  induce  Northern  industry  to  open  plants  in  North 
Carolina.  "Our  workers  aren't  spoiled  by  organizations,  although  there 
are  always  a  few  bad  apples.  A  big  selling  point  is  that  we  have  no  unions 
to  speak  of.  So  we  can  get  a  machine  worker  to  turn  out  1,600  items  a  day 
for  $3.00  an  hour  where  in  Detroit  he's  limited  to  400  items  a  day  for 
$5.00  an  hour;'4 

Wachovia  Bank's  former  president,  Archie  Davis,  is  proud  as  a 
grandee  with  North  Carolina's  labor  conditions.  "Face  it,"  he  says,  "the 
greatest  advantage  we  enjoy  is  Taft-Hartley's  14b.  'Right  to  work'  is  the 
greatest  attraction  industry  has  to  come  here."5 

In  1974  Carolina  Power  &  Light,  wanting  nothing  left  to  guesswork, 
surveyed  100  companies  to  find  out  why  they  had  moved  to  North 
Carolina.  The  single  greatest  advantage  listed  by  the  most  companies,  56 
of  them,  was  the  "quality  and  quantity  of  labor  supply"  in  the  state.  On  a 
four-point  scale,  three  of  the  five  assets  rating  above  a  "three"  were  the 
"acceptance  of  the  company  by  the  employee,"  3.3;  "labor  laws,"  3.2; 
"labor  attitude"  (attitude  to  unions),  3.1.  (The  CP&  L  study  results  were 
kept  confidential,  shared  only  with  the  state  government  industry- 
hunters.6)  Said  CP  &  L's  industrial  developer,  "A  non-union  labor  force 
is  an  excellent  reason  for  industry  to  come  to  North  Carolina  and  that  is 
why  they  do  come."7 

Union  organizers  and  company  spokesmen  alike  cite  as  the  main 
objective  reason  for  North  Carolina's  low  rate  of  unionization  the  lack  of 
large  concentrations  of  people.  It  is  hard  to  organize  when  workers  are 
scattered,  and  when  they  live  close  to  the  soil.  Mill  hands  go  to  work  in 
the  factories  from  their  small  farms.  They  maintain  their  farms  so  as  not 
to  be  dependent  on  industrial  wages.  Shortly  before  he  died  in  1974,  ex- 
Governor  Luther  Hodges,  a  former  textile  executive,  recalled,  "The  mill 
villages  were  an  outgrowth  of  plantation  life  and  tenant  farming.  We 
were  out  to  foster  a  good  trusting  relationship  between  the  farmers 
coming  into  the  mills  and  the  companies."8  Scott  Hoyman,  southern 
director  of  the  Textile  Workers  Union  of  America,  agrees  with  a 
qualification.  "The  absence  of  big  cities  means  that  there  is  no  real 
working  class  or,  rather,  there  is  a  rural  working  class,  and  rural  workers 
are  family-oriented.  The  workplace  is  not  looked  at  in  business  terms  but 
in  family  terms.  This  was  true  until  recently.  But  now  industry  has  run 
out  of  farmboys,  and  consciousness  is  beginning  to  change."9 

The  proletarianization  of  those  "farmboys"  through  technical  educa- 
tion has  for  20  years  been  the  first  priority  of  the  North  Carolina  school 
system.  For  a  state  that  derives  much  of  its  progressive  reputation  from 

142 


Four 

the  image  of  Chapel  Hill  and  Duke  University,  North  Carolina's  public 
schools  are  just  about  last  in  nearly  every  way.  The  CP  &  L  survey  of 
what  attracts  Northern  industy  to  the  state  found  that  the  schools  were 
considered  the  biggest  disadvantage.10  "It  is  impossible  to  attract  sophis- 
ticated industry  to  an  unsophisticated  labor  force,"  reported  CP  &  L's 
industry-hunter.  "Of  course  the  military  bases  in  the  east  provide  indus- 
try with  semi-skilled  workers,  not  readily  available  elsewhere.  But  our 
greatest  inducement  is  our  community  college  system  which  trains 
workers  free  of  charge  for  new  industries."1 1 

During  World  War  II  the  concept  of  the  community  college  gained 
wide  acceptance  among  U.S.  educators.  With  the  massive  return  of  GI's, 
community  college  systems  were  rapidly  developed  across  the  country. 
North  Carolina,  which  needed  them  most,  was  slowest  to  act.12  The 
state's  first  junior  college  was  set  up  in  Asheville  in  1927  but  operated 
until  1949  without  a  campus  of  its  own,  moving  from  high  school 
basements  to  children's  homes  or  wherever  space  was  available.  During 
the  war,  junior  colleges  were  also  established  in  Charlotte  and 
Wilmington.  But  that  was  the  extent  of  North  Carolina's  community 
college  system  until  the  late  1950s. 

In  1957,  during  Governor  Hodges'  drive  to  bring  industry  to  the  state,  a 
system  of  "industrial  education  institutes"  was  agreed  upon.  The  state 
might  continue  to  suffer  from  intellectual  malnutrition,  but  would  no 
longer  go  without  a  working  class  schooled  in  technical  education.  A 
network  of  community  colleges  and  technical  institutes  was  built 
throughout  the  state.  Its  purpose  was  singular:  "Equipping  the  indi- 
viduals with  the  specific  skills  and  knowledge  required  by  a  clearly 
defined  job  in  a  particular  company.  .  .  .  [The  program  will]  open  the 
doors  of  industry  to  the  entire  educational  services  of  a  community 
college."13  Some  56  institutions  are  now  in  operation;  North  Carolina's 
taxpayers  paid  more  than  $115  million  between  1963  and  1970  to  train 
workers  free  of  charge  for  the  monopolies.14  Former  Governor  Terry 
Sanford  said  proudly,  "We  have  mobility.  An  extension  unit  can  be 
established  for  a  class  in  one  or  more  subjects  in  a  nearby  county,  as 
needed.  There  is  virtually  no  limit  on  the  industrial  and  technical  courses 
offered.  We  tell  industrialists  we  can  teach  anything.  Our  courses  range 
from  bricklaying  to  poultry  technology  to  welding  to  practical  nurs- 
ing."" 

There  are  no  entrance  requirements  to  the  community  colleges.  If  you 
want  to  work  at  Burlington  Industries  as  a  fabric  weaver,  just  enroll  at 
Guilford  Technical  Institute.  Your  taxes  will  pay  for  your  apprentice- 
ship, saving  Burlington  the  cost.  The  community  college  system's  1974 

143 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

budget  was  $65  million,  to  accommodate  an  enrollment  of  400,000 
students.  "And  folks  can  stay  on  the  farms,"  said  community  college 
administrator  Joe  Sturdivant.  "About  95  percent  of  the  people  in  the 
state  are  within  a  25-mile  commuter  range  of  a  community  college."16 
Official  promotional  material  claimed  that  "the  strategic  dispersal  of 
these  institutions  throughout  the  state  insures  prompt  and  efficient 
service,  wherever  an  industry  may  be  located."17 

The  concept  of  state-monopoly  capitalism  is  seen  in  bold  relief  in  this 
public  school  system,  paid  for  by  taxes,  completely  at  the  disposal  of  the 
corporations.  "A  complete  customized  training  package  is  tailored  to  the 
particular  needs  of  each  company. . . .  For  valid  reasons,  the  participat- 
ing company  may  prefer  to  use  some  of  its  own  personnel  as  instructors. 
The  State,  however,  will  pay  the  salaries  of  all  instructors. ...  the  State 
will  reimburse  the  company  for  50  percent  of  the  non-salvageable 
materials  expended  in  the  training  effort,  up  to  a  maximum  of  $100  for 
each  new  job. . . .  North  Carolina's  industrial  training  program  makes  a 
conscious  effort  not  to  infringe  on  the  company's  right  of  selection. 
However,  at  the  company's  request,  the  Employment  Security  Commis- 
sion will  test  and  screen  job  candidates.  Only  those  applicants  meeting 
the  physical  and  mental  criteria  established  for  a  particular  job  will  be 
referred  to  the  company  for  further  evaluation."18  With  such  a  pre- 
disposition, the  community  college  system  not  unnaturally  now  offers 
courses  in  "management  development"  for  company  foreman  and  ad- 
ministrators. The  curriculum  includes  classes  in  the  "Science  of  Human 
Relations,"  "Art  of  Motivating  People,"  "Work  Measurement"  (wage 
rates,  incentives,  etc.),  "Motion  and  Time  Study,"  and  "Labor  Laws  for 
Supervisors." 

It  is  hardly  surprising  that  Charlotte's  First  National  Union  Bank 
concludes  that  "throughout  the  past  century"  labor  is  the  main  factor  in 
drawing  industry  to  North  Carolina.  "Labor  has  traditionally  been 
plentiful,  trainable,  willing  to  work  for  modest  wages  and  non-union." 
Nowhere  in  the  country  is  the  labor  force  less  unionized.  Only  6.8  percent 
of  North  Carolina's  working  class  is  organized.  Only  South  Carolina's 
8.6  percent  approximates  that  low  figure.  Each  year  the  state  ranks  as  the 
one  with  the  fewest  strikes.  In  1967  North  Carolina  lost  .04  percent  of  its 
total  estimated  working  time  due  to  strikes.  The  average  time  lost  for  all 
states  was  .25  percent.  Hardly  coincidental  is  the  fact  that  the  state  is  also 
the  lowest  in  the  nation  in  take-home  wages  for  blue-collar  workers.  In 
1969,  for  example,  Tarheel  workers  in  manufacturing  averaged,  before 
taxes,  $105.88  per  week.  And  in  the  major  industries,  wages  were  less 
than  that  worst  average  in  the  country.  Textile  mill  workers  averaged 

144 


Four 

$99.17  weekly  before  taxes  (in  the  yarn  mills,  $94.51);  apparel  workers, 
$74.97;  lumber  and  wood  production,  $85.27;  furniture,  $102.86.  These 
industries  account  for  nearly  75  percent  of  all  manufacturing  employ- 
ment, and  act  to  constrain  wages  in  other  sectors  of  the  economy  as 
well.19  (All  figures  cited  here  and  elsewhere  in  the  book  are  from  the 
period  of  the  late  1960s  and  early  1970s,  the  years  that  Ben  Chavis  and  his 
co-workers  were  being  politicized  and  organizing  others  and  the  state 
was  putting  them  on  trial.  The  situation  has  not  changed  substantially 
since  then.  In  January  1978,  for  example,  the  average  manufacturing 
wage  in  North  Carolina  was  $4.18  an  hour,  44  cents  below  the  Southern 
average,  and  $1.60  or  nearly  30  percent  below  the  national  average.) 

In  1975  a  special  study  on  the  earnings  of  North  Carolinians  by  the 
Department  of  City  and  Regional  Planning  at  the  University  of  North 
Carolina  was  quashed  by  the  State's  Office  of  Planning,  which  had 
originally  commissioned  the  study.  Small  wonder:  the  state's  own  schol- 
ars showed  that  North  Carolina,  8th  in  the  country  in  industrialization, 
was  50th  in  industrial  wages.  And  the  earnings  gap  is  growing:  In  1971  the 
Tarheel  industrial  worker  was  paid  $21.34  per  week  less  than  the  average 
industrial  worker,  nationally;  in  1975  he  was  paid  $53.57  less.  What's 
more,  "North  Carolina's  anti-union  stance  is  a  major  reason  for  the 
state's  low  earned  income,"  and  to  move  up  the  ladder  "the  state  needs 
more  unionization."  But  while  the  state's  wages  lag  behind,  "profits  are 
higher  than  the  national  average"  in  19  of  22  industrial  sectors.20 

What  this  means  for  the  corporations  is  obvious:  In  1973,  with  North 
Carolina  workers  taking  home  barely  $5,000  a  year  on  the  average,  value 
added  per  worker — i.e.,  corporate  profits  per  worker — averaged  more 
than  $15,000.  That  is,  North  Carolina  corporations  and  banks  were 
making  three  dollars  off  a  worker's  labor  for  each  dollar  he  was  paid. 
Moreover,  surplus  value  would  increase  at  a  rate  of  5.4  percent  a  year  in 
North  Carolina,  as  compared  to  4.8  percent  for  the  United  States  as  a 
whole.21  Furthermore,  Black  family  income  in  North  Carolina  is  about 
half  that  of  white,  awesome  evidence  of  the  profitability  of  racism.22  With 
such  a  rate  of  exploitation  available,  North  Carolina's  manufacturing 
employment  increased  54.4  percent  between  1960  and  1973,  compared 
with  18.4  percent  for  the  United  States  as  a  whole.23  Obviously  the 
monopolies  know  there  is  gold  in  them  there  mills. 

Such  are  the  ravages  of  a  "free"  economy  that  the  first  minimum  wage 
law  passed  in  the  state— in  1959,  12  years  after  passage  of  the  "right-to- 
work"  law — required  wages  of  at  least  75  cents  an  hour.  In  1960  North 
Carolina's  per  capita  income  was  $666  below  the  national  level.  Ten  years 
later,  the  difference  had  increased  to  $726.  Bank  projections  for  1980 

145 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

estimate  that  average  wages  in  the  state  will  reach  $6,500,  or  below 
present  national  poverty  levels.24  Because  textiles  and  apparel  alone 
account  for  1.5  million  workers  or  50  percent  of  North  Carolina's 
working  class,  wages  in  this  sector  determine  the  economic  status  of  all 
the  state's  labor.  But  the  1975  average  annual  family  income  of  Southern 
textile  workers,  $6,380,  lagged  $3,186  or  one  third  below  the  estimated 
$9,566  needed  by  an  urban  family  of  four  to  maintain  a  modest  living 
standard,  according  to  the  U.S.  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics.  Their 
average  hourly  wage  in  1975  trailed  the  national  factory  average  by  $1.40; 
in  1974  the  gap  was  $1.17.25  Again,  only  15  percent  of  North  Carolina's 
textile  workers  are  in  unions. 

It  is  axiomatic  by  now  that  the  absence  of  a  strong  trade  union 
movement  guarantees  the  presence  of  widespread  poverty  for  working 
people  and  their  families.  North  Carolina,  with  its  lowest  rate  of  union- 
ization in  the  country,  again  proves  the  axiom:  Tarheel  workers  also  have 
the  lowest  take-home  wages  in  the  United  States.  Although  the  state  is 
highly  agricultural,  North  Carolina  has  many  more  industrial  workers 
per  capita  than  the  country  as  a  whole:  In  1973, 40  percent  of  the  state's 
workers  were  in  manufacturing,  as  compared  to  26  percent  of  all  U.S. 
workers.26  But  only  6.8  percent  of  the  state's  workers  are  in  unions,  while 
the  national  percentage  is  28.27  Consequently  North  Carolina  workers  on 
manufacturing  payrolls  take  home  the  lowest  average  weekly  earnings  in 
the  nation,  $97.17  in  1970,  compared  to  the  statewide  average  of 
$120.36.2« 

Furthermore,  in  1965  the  most  comprehensive  study  ever  made  of 
North  Carolina's  poverty  showed  that,  "In  no  major  N.C.  industry  did 
wages  reach  the  average  level ...  for  the  country  as  a  whole."29  In  July 
Governor  Terry  Sanford  initiated  the  North  Carolina  Fund  to  "experi- 
ment with  and  demonstrate  new  approaches  to  the  problem  of  poverty." 
This  proved  to  be  the  pilot  project  for  the  federal  Economic  Opportunity 
Act,  Lyndon  Johnson's  "war  on  poverty."  With  some  nine  million 
dollars  from  the  Ford  Foundation  and  a  couple  of  R.J.  Reynolds  family 
funds,  the  ruling  class  discovered — hold  onto  your  hat — that  working 
folks  in  the  Tarheel  state  were  poor.  In  fact,  "about  two  families  in  every 
five  meet  one  of  the  commonly  used  definitions  of  poverty — that  of 
$3,000  family  income  or  less."30 

Moreover,  in  1960,  50.6  percent  of  North  Carolina's  families  had 
incomes  under  $4,000.  The  Conference  on  Economic  Progress  said  that 
one-fifth  of  the  nation  lived  in  poverty  in  1959,  but  in  North  Carolina 
one-half  fell  in  the  poverty  bracket.  Another  22.2  percent  of  the  state's 
families  earned  between  $4,000  and  $6,000,  the  conference's  definition  of 

146 


Four 

"economic  deprivation."  In  all,  then,  72.8  percent  of  all  North  Caroli- 
nians "lived  under  conditions  of  poverty  or  deprivation  as  defined  by  the 
Conference,  compared  with  approximately  40  percent  for  the  nation's 
population  as  a  whole."31  Significantly,  virtually  all  of  these  families  were 
employed.  More  than  9  out  of  10  of  these  families  had  working  male 
heads  of  households,  with  no  distinctive  difference  between  white  and 
Black  families,  which  supports  the  assertion  that  low  income,  not 
unemployment  is  responsible  for  poverty  in  North  Carolina.  Actually,  80 
percent  of  those  in  the  low-income  categories  were  working  40  hours  or 
more  per  week.  As  an  example  of  what  James  Baldwin  once  referred  to  as 
"democratic  anguish" — the  suffering  of  white  alongside  Black — "nearly 
half  of  the  whites  and  one  out  of  three  non-whites  worked  more  than  40 
hours  per  week."32  The  latter  figure  was  based  on  1965  statistics  after  a 
decade  of  the  most  intensive  industrialization  in  the  state's  history.  After 
five  years  more  of  the  same,  North  Carolina's  average  per  capita  income 
had  risen  to  $3,218,  still  well  below  the  poverty  line.33 

Aside  from  the  obvious  possibilities  for  growth  in  North  Carolina,  the 
labor  movement  would  appear  to  have  clear  self-interest  reasons  for 
organizing  that  state  and  the  entire  South.  Not  only  is  there  a  direct 
correlation  between  the  absence  of  strong  trade  unions  and  anti-labor 
and  reactionary  political  representation  in  Washington,  but  the  poverty 
and  low  wages  in  the  state  pose  a  continuing  threat  of  runaway  plants 
from  the  North,  thus  driving  down  Northern  wages.  That  the  trade 
unions  have  for  the  most  part  avoided  or  rejected  the  challenge  speaks  to 
the  bureaucratic  narrow-mindedness  and  "class-collaboration"  of  the 
top  AFL-CIO  national  leadership  under  George  Meany. 

The  effects  of  poverty  in  North  Carolina  also  influence  the  education 
system  in  this  state  that  points  to  Duke  and  Chapel  Hill  as  its  most 
treasured  symbols  of  accomplishment.  While  North  Carolina  ranks 
among  the  highest  states  in  the  ratio  of  expenditures  on  public  education 
to  total  personal  income,  that  income  level  is  so  low  that  the  state  ranks 
below  the  national  average  in  per  pupil  expenditures  and  teacher  salaries. 
In  1970  the  high  school  drop-out  rate  was  32.7,  nearly  one  in  three.  Of 
North  Carolinians  25  years  or  older,  10  percent  had  completed  less  than 
five  years  of  school,  twice  the  national  average;  45  percent  had  never 
gotten  as  far  as  high  school.34 

Worse  still,  while  only  48  percent  of  whites  over  45  years  old  finished 
high  school,  the  figure  for  Blacks  was  38  percent.  In  1967  the  North 
Carolina  Fund  noted  that  of  every  five  poor  families  in  the  state,  "three 
are  white  and  two  are  non-white."35  James  Baldwin  has  written,  in 
another  connection,  that,  "People  are  continually  pointing  out  to  me  the 

147 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

wretchedness  of  white  people  in  order  to  console  me  for  the  wretchedness 
of  Blacks.  But  an  itemized  account  of  the  American  failure  does  not 
console  me  and  it  should  not  console  anyone  else."36  Small  consolation 
indeed  are  North  Carolina  poverty  figures;  the  cited  study  also  revealed 
that  of  every  three  white  families,  one  lived  in  poverty,  while  three  out  of 
four  Black  families  were  so  defined.  In  Robeson  County,  with  the  state's 
largest  concentration  of  Indian  peoples  combined  with  a  large  Black 
population,  almost  60  percent  of  all  families  earned  less  than  $3,000  a 
year. 

That  Black  workers  are  the  "last  hired,  first  fired"  was  borne  out  by  the 
new  labor  force  of  North  Carolina's  industrialization  campaign  under 
Luther  Hodges  in  the  1950s.  Most  of  the  jobs  created  by  economic 
growth  in  that  decade  were  taken  by  whites,  mainly  by  white  women. 
White  women  obtained  over  126,000  jobs,  nearly  88  percent  of  the  new 
jobs  created  between  1950  and  1969.  By  contrast,  non-white  workers  held 
37,000 fewer  jobs  in  1960  than  in  1950.37  Even  a  state  government  study  in 
1973,  which  tended  to  minimize  the  extent  of  poverty  in  North  Carolina, 
conceded  that  "approximately  44  percent  of  the  state's  non-white  popu- 
lation was  poor  in  1970  compared  to  only  approximately  13  percent  of  the 
white  population."38  Progress,  in  this  state  that  considers  progress  its 
most  saleable  image,  is  slow  in  coming.  A  1972  study  of  Black  employ- 
ment in  the  state's  textile  industry  found  less  than  2,200  Black  managers, 
foremen  and  skilled  women  workers  in  the  mills.  Black  managers  were 
only  half  of  one  percent  of  the  total  managerial  force,  although  Black 
workers  totaled  nearly  a  quarter  of  the  labor  force  in  textiles.39  Nor  is 
change  coming  with  even  deliberate  speed.  Still  another  study — the 
human  rights  commissioner's  alternative  to  fundamental  social  change — 
this  one  of  the  city  of  Charlotte,  the  most  populous  urban  area  in  the 
Carolinas,  finds  that  Blacks  won't  be  living  as  well  in  the  year  2000  as 
whites  are  now:  "The  chances  of  Blacks  even  reaching  the  1970  levels  for 
whites  during  the  next  25  years  are  negligible,"  in  this  state  where  Black 
family  income  is  half  that  of  whites.40 

Working  people,  Black  and  white,  are  driven  into  further  impoverish- 
ment by  the  state's  tax  system,  directed  as  are  all  state  laws  to  favor  the 
banks  and  corporations.  A  sales  and  use  tax  took  some  $335  million  from 
the  consumers  in  the  years  1971-2.41  During  the  same  period,  74.8  percent 
of  the  net  collections  from  state  income  taxes  came  from  individuals, 
only  12.7  percent  from  domestic  corporations,  a  bare  2.3  percent  from 
the  finance  corporations.42  If  the  banks  were  on  welfare,  the  poor  were 
virtually  excluded  from  state  aid.  In  1974  in  all  of  North  Carolina,  only 
146,000  children  and  64,000  social  security  recipients  received  welfare 

148 


Four 

That  was  only  4  percent  of  the  total  population  obtaining  aid  to 
dependent  children,  old-age  assistance,  and  help  for  the  needy  blind  or 
totally  disabled.  Neither  unemployed  workers  nor  the  working  poor  (a 
majority  of  the  working  class)  were  eligible  for  welfare.  Children  were 
eligible  only  when  one  of  the  parents  was  missing,  in  which  case  the  child 
received  $41  per  month  in  1974.  Thus  a  mother  and  four  children — a 
family  of  five — would  receive  $164  a  month,  not  including  food  stamps 
and  medicaid.43 

Those  who  decry  the  catechism  of  "welfare  chiselers"  and  "rip-off 
artists"  might  note  that  old-age  assistance  recipients  were  fewer  in 
February  1973— 31,000— than  in  1940  when  there  were  35,000.  Average 
monthly  payments  per  recipient  amounted  to  $77.93.  Medicaid  and 
medical  assistance  payments  are  also  in  decline  in  North  Carolina:  In 
February  1971  these  expenditures  reached  $9.36  million,  in  February 
1973,  $7.72  million.44 

Some  years  ago  former  Secretary  of  Defense  Charles  Wilson,  a 
General  Motors  executive  who  might  have  missed  his  calling  as  a 
fortune-cookie  philosopher,  said  of  the  unemployed  and  those  on  wel- 
fare: "I  have  always  liked  bird  dogs  better  than  kennel  dogs.  You  know, 
ones  who  will  get  out  and  hunt  for  food  rather  than  sit  and  yelp."  Mr. 
Wilson  must  smile  down  from  his  board  room  in  the  sky  on  North 
Carolina's  welfare  system  which  in  1972  served  an  average  of  11,000 
adults  a  month.  That  is  less  than  half  of  one  percent  of  all  adult  North 
Carolinians  being  helped  in  nursing  homes,  centers  for  the  retarded, 
mental  hospitals,  etc.45  Payments  for  public  assistance  expended  per 
Tarheel  resident  amounted  to  $40.98  for  the  fiscal  year  ending  June  30, 
1971,  barely  half  the  national  average.  By  contrast  New  York,  which  led 
the  country,  spent  $167.56  per  citizen  on  public  assistance.  But  even  the 
deep  South  led  North  Carolina:  Louisiana,  $67.71;  Georgia,  $65.81; 
Alabama,  $65.76;  Mississippi,  $54.47.46 

The  state  is  no  more  generous  in  spending  monies  for  public  health 
departments.  For  the  fiscal  year  1972-  3  North  Carolina  allocated  all  of 
55  cents  per  person;  combined  with  federal  and  local  funds,  the  health 
departments*  per  capita  spending  was  $4.46.47  By  contrast,  the  legislature 
budgeted  some  $55.19  per  capita  for  highway  construction  and  upkeep  in 
1970.  The  results  of  such  a  priority  of  values  are  predictable:  Not  much 
has  changed  for  the  average  Tarheel  worker  in  50  years  when  it  comes  to 
health  care.  In  1920  the  state  had  562  dentists,  or  22  for  every  100,000 
persons;  in  1970  there  were  1,476  dentists  or  30  for  every  100,000. 
According  to  the  Association  of  American  Medical  Colleges  there 
should  be  at  least  one  doctor  for  every  571  persons.  In  1970  the  national 

149 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 


average  was  one  per  711.  North  Carolina  had  one  doctor  per  1,063.  And 
only  15  hospitals  have  outpatient  clinics  in  this  state  of  more  than  five 
million  people.48 

The  consequences  of  a  legislature  in  the  service  of  the  banks  are  more 
than  only  anti-strike  bills  aimed  at  labor.  Working  people  as  a  whole, 
without  the  protection  of  a  strong,  aggressive  trade  union  movement,  are 
victimized  in  many  ways.  The  division  between  white  and  Black  work- 
ers— which  assures  the  absence  of  such  a  labor  movement — works  to 
sustain  that  victimization,  hitting  Blacks  hardest  but  also  hurting  whites. 
Infant  mortality  in  North  Carolina  in  1972  was  22.6  per  thousand  live 
births;  for  whites  it  was  18.2  per  thousand  live  births,  for  Blacks  32.4  per 
thousand.  Between  1968  and  1972  the  fetal  mortality  rate  per  1,000  was 
12.8  for  whites,  and  nearly  twice  that,  23.4,  for  non-whites.  Death  rates 
that  year  were  9.1  per  1,000  North  Carolinians.  The  death  rate  was  23 
percent  higher  for  non-whites  than  for  whites — 10.6  compared  to  8.6  per 
1,000.  A  non-white  child  up  to  four  years  of  age  was  twice  as  likely  to  die 
as  a  white  child  of  the  same  age.  A  non-white  adult  23-44  years  of  age  was 
three  times  as  likely  to  die  as  the  white  adult  of  the  same  age  group. 

Figures  for,  say,  tuberculosis  and  venereal  diseases,  both  "poverty 
diseases,"  are  telling: 


Thus,  non-whites  who  are  about  21.5  percent  of  the  population  had 
nearly  two-thirds  of  the  TB  (or,  proportionally,  10  times  more  TB  than 
whites)  and  80  percent  of  the  VD  (or  proportionally  20  times  more  VD 
than  whites).49  Of  North  Carolina's  legally  blind  persons,  almost  42 
persons  are  non-white,  twice  their  proportion  of  the  general  popula- 
tion.50 

Those  who  wax  exuberant  about  the  progressivism  of  North  Carolina 
lose  some  of  the  gee-whiz  quality  in  their  voices  when  discussing  the 
effects  of  poverty.  In  North  Carolina  in  1969,  for  example,  more  than 
44,000  families  earned  a  total  annual  income  less  than  the  cost  of  the 
economic  diet  alone,  i.e.,  less  than  $1,200  for  a  family  of  four.  A  state 
Board  of  Health  survey  in  1971  found  that  only  a  quarter  of  the  families 
eligible  for  food  stamps  were  participating.  The  survey  also  found  that  43 
percent  of  the  society's  pre-school-age  children  and  27  percent  of  all 
households  were  consuming  inadequate  diets,  deficient  in  Vitamins  A 


1972 


Total 
5,200,388 
1,017 
28,429 


White 
4,041,809 
369 
5,784 


Non-white 
1,185,579 
648 
22,645 


Population 
Reported  TB  cases 
Reported  VD  cases 


150 


Four 

and  C,  iron,  calcium  and  protein.  The  greatest  frequency  of  inadequate 
diets  occurred  among  non-whites  (47  percent  compared  with  29  percent 
for  whites)  but  even  among  households  reporting  income  of  $9,000  or 
more,  virtually  all  of  whom  were  white,  21  percent  had  inadequate  diets. 
Further,  more  than  40  percent  of  Black  households  in  the  industrial 
Piedmont  and  the  rural  east  had  substandard  food  preparation  facilities, 
compared  with  only  3  percent  of  white  households.51  Nearly  14.3  percent 
of  all  housing  units  lacked  some  or  all  plumbing  facilities.  The  national 
average  was  6  percent.  In  North  Carolina  38.6  percent  of  the  Black 
population  lacked  some  or  all  plumbing  facilities.52  Such  were  the  social 
facts  of  New  Southern  life  that  Ben  Chavis  and  his  co-workers  sought  to 
change. 


It  is  perhaps  sufficient  commentary  on  New  Southern  justice  to  note 
that  the  brief  formative  years  in  which  Ben  and  Jim  Grant  and  T.J. 
Reddy  came  to  positions  of  community  leadership  by  organizing  against 
war  and  for  equal  education  witnessed  a  parallel  development  of  criminal 
aptitude  in  Walter  David  Washington  and  Theodore  Alfred  Hood.  The 
governments  of  North  Carolina  and  the  United  States,  in  their  zeal  to 
persecute  the  community  leadership,  chose  to  embrace  the  criminals. 

There  is  some  evidence  to  suggest  that  Washington  and  Hood  may 
have  been  operating  as  police  agents  as  far  back  as  1967  when  they  set  up 
a  Black  Cultural  Association  in  a  separate  Charlotte  neighborhood  than 
that  in  which  Ben's  Black  House  stood. That  the  two  informers  formed  a 
group  called  US,  which  in  other  parts  of  the  country  was  clearly  an  arm 
of  the  police,  at  a  time  when  the  Black  Panther  Organization  was 
organized  in  Charlotte,  lends  substance  to  this  suggestion.  As  does  their 
driving  a  carload  of  dynamite  into  a  police  roadblock  at  a  time  of  racial 
tensions  in  Oxford.  Nobody  would  ever  accuse  Washington  and  Hood  of 
being  brilliant  master  criminals,  but  such  an  act  suggests  an  incompe- 
tence roughly  on  a  level  of  being  unable  to  catch  water  with  a  sponge. 
Leaving  the  country  on  the  day  of  their  trial,  then  returning  immediately 
to  Charlotte  to  surrender,  and  then  escaping  all  prosecution  in  return  for 
testifying  against  Ben  and  Jim  and  the  Charlotte  Three  seemed  to  be 
some  of  the  fanciest  footwork  since  Gene  Kelly  was  singing  in  the  rain. 

These  two  agents  in  the  service  of  the  government  merit  some  exam- 
ination. Washington's  first  conviction  came  in  1959  when  he  was  twelve 
and  was  arrested  for  breaking  and  entering  and  larceny.  Before  his 
teenage  years  were  over,  he  added  new  convictions  for  damage  to 

151 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

property,  assault  and  assault  with  a  deadly  weapon.  In  1967  Washington 
received  a  medical  discharge  from  the  Marine  Corps  after  half  a  year  in 
Vietnam.  Diagnosed  as  schizophrenic,  he  was  declared  100  percent 
mentally  disabled  after  trying  to  shoot  his  first  sergeant.  Since  1968  he 
has  been  receiving  total  disability  payments  from  the  U.S.  government. 

Washington  pleaded  guilty  to  armed  robbery  charges  in  August  1969, 
received  a  20-25-year  suspended  sentence  and  was  ordered  to  seek 
psychiatric  help,  keep  a  curfew  between  8  pm  and  5  am  for  five  years,  and 
abstain  from  all  intoxicants.  When  he  was  arrested  in  Oxford  on  the 
explosives  charges  in  1970,  Washington  was  in  violation  of  that  proba- 
tion. When  he  came  to  court  for  the  probation  violation  hearing  in  May 
1971,  he  brought  along  District  Attorney  Tom  Moore,  who  was  to 
prosecute  the  Lazy  B  case,  and  Assistant  U.S.  Attorney  David  Long, 
who  prosecuted  the  Chavis-Grant  federal  case.  Judge  Robert  Martin, 
who  had  presided  over  the  trial  of  the  Teels,  the  Oxford  Klansmen  who 
were  acquitted  for  the  murder  of  Henry  Lee  Marrow  (and  who  would 
later  act  as  judge  in  the  Wilmington  10  trial),  heard  the  appeal  for 
Washington's  continued  probation.  Martin  agreed  not  only  not  to 
withdraw  probation  from  Washington  but  also  to  drop  all  the  conditions 
of  that  probation — reporting  to  probation  officers,  the  payment  of  fines, 
curfews,  etc.  Martin  acknowledged  that  Washington  had  violated  all  the 
terms  of  his  probation  but  said  they  were  not  serious  violations.  A 
Charlotte  Three  appeals  hearing  in  December  1974  disclosed  that  at  the 
time  of  Washington's  testimony  against  Ben  and  Jim  in  the  federal  case 
and  in  the  Lazy  B  trial,  the  informer  was  a  suspect  under  investigation  for 
five  separate  Mecklenburg  County  murders.  This  fact  was  never  dis- 
closed to  the  defense  attorneys.  Washington  was  never  charged  with  any 
of  the  murders. 

Al  Hood  grew  up  and  went  to  school  with  Washington  and  became  his 
partner  in  crime.  Before  the  Oxford  dynamite  arrest,  Hood  had  been 
convicted  of  auto  theft,  assault  with  a  deadly  weapon  with  intent  to  kill, 
carrying  a  concealed  weapon  and  assault  on  an  officer.  At  the  time  of  the 
Oxford  bust,  he  was  facing  charges  of  armed  robbery  and  of  carrying  a 
concealed  weapon,  as  well  as  various  probation  violations.  For  his 
"work"  on  the  Chavis-Grant  and  Charlotte  Three  trials,  his  $165,000 
bond  was  reduced  to  $50,000  and  then  to  a  recognizance  bond.  All 
pending  charges  against  Hood,  including  those  unrelated  to  the  Oxford 
incident,  were  dropped.  Together,  Hood  and  Washington  had  nearly  100 
years  in  prison  sentences  facing  them,  all  of  which  were  wiped  clean  for 
their  services  to  the  prosecutors'  offices.  One  could  say  of  them,  as 
William  Powell's  Nick  Charles  said  in  The  Thin  Man,  "I  don't  like 


152 


Four 

crooks,  and  if  I  did  like  crooks  I  wouldn't  like  crooks  who  are  also 
stoolpigeons,  and  if  1  did  like  crooks  who  are  also  stoolpigeons,  I 
wouldn't  like  you." 

The  suspicion  that  Hood  and  Washington  may  have  peen  police  agents 
all  along  is  given  further  credence  by  their  seeming  immunity  to  prosecu- 
tion as  their  life  of  crime  continued  unabated  even  after  the  Charlotte 
Three  trial.  On  August  31,  1972,  a  month  after  that  trial,  Hood  was 
charged  with  narcotics  possession  and  murder  in  the  killing  of  a  heroin 
dealer  while  contesting  control  of  the  Charlotte  area  drug  traffic.  He  has 
never  been  brought  to  trial,  remaining  free  on  his  own  recognizance. 
Four  months  later,  on  January  30, 1974,  Washington  entered  a  Charlotte 
hospital  with  gunshot  wounds  in  his  heart  and  lungs.  Two  weeks  after 
that  he  was  allowed  to  leave  the  hospital  without  ever  having  to  explain 
the  details  of  the  shooting,  although  the  press  speculated  that  it  was  in 
retaliation  for  giving  information  regarding  an  armed  robbery  case  to 
police.  Washington  was  in  violation  of  his  probation  restrictions  at  the 
time,  as  he  had  been  for  at  least  the  previous  five  years.  A  few  months 
later  he  was  back  in  Mercy  hospital  after  shooting  and  being  shot  by  a 
store  owner  whom  Washington  was  either  robbing  or  enforcing  a 
syndicate  policy  upon.  The  police  questioned  him  this  time  around,  but 
again  he  was  released  with  the  shooting  going  unexplained. 

The  old  adage  that  holds  that  crime  doesn't  pay  never  took  into 
account  the  enterprising  Hood  and  Washington.  In  the  spring  of  1974  the 
Charlotte  Observer  reported  that  the  two  hoodlums  received  a  minimum 
of  $4,000  each  from  the  U.S.  Justice  and  Treasury  departments  for  their 
testimony  against  Ben  and  Jim  in  the  federal  trial.  The  payments  were 
approved  by  the  now  convicted  Watergate  criminal  Robert  Mardian, 
acting  on  behalf  of  the  now  convicted  Watergate  criminal  John  Mitchell. 
The  Justice  Department  alone  paid  out  $3,000  each  to  Hood  and 
Washington  as  "relocation  fees"  to  buy  a  ranch  in  Mexico  after  the  Lazy 
B  trial.  The  $1,000  paid  to  each  of  the  two  informers  by  the  Treasury 
Department  were  described  alternately  as  "reward"  payments  and  "in- 
formants' fees."  Ironically,  the  last  $1,000  payments  were  made  by  federal 
agents  at  a  time  the  state  had  an  arrest  warrant  out  on  Washington  for 
probation  violations.  "Washington,"  reported  the  Observer  on  March 
24,  1974,  "had  been  cooperating  with  the  FBI  ever  since  the  Oxford 
arrest" — that  is,  even  during  the  "flight"  to  Canada  to  avoid  prosecution 
which  Ben  and  Jim  were  alleged  to  have  conspired  to  aid — and  had 
"arranged  through  his  attorney"  to  be  arrested  three  months  later  on 
December  27,  1970. 

The  amounts  of  U.S.  tax  dollars  paid  to  Hood  and  Washington  have 

153 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

not  been  fully  verified.  While  the  Justice  and  Treasury  departments  claim 
that  they  "were  only  able  to  find  records  showing  payments  of  $4,000  for 
each  man,11  an  attorney  who  handled  the  negotiations  insists  they 
received  about  $15,000  each.  The  Observer  reported,  however,  that 
"Three  North  Carolina  law  enforcement  officers  closely  acquainted  with 
Washington,  say  that  in  [1973]  Washington  has  bragged  to  them  that  he 
received  additional  money.  He  gave  each  officer  a  different  figure, 
ranging  from  $38,000  to  $70,000.  The  officers  all  say  they  are  inclined  to 
believe  him."  It  is  known  that  in  addition  to  the  $8,000  paid  the  two  as 
"rewards"  and  "informants'  fees,"  $13,837.32  was  given  them  for  airline 
tickets  and  to  house  them  and  their  families  at  an  Atlantic  Beach,  N.C., 
resort  for  three  months.  Treasury  Department  requests  for  "expenditure 
of  funds  for  purchase  of  evidence"  were  later  made  public.  The  Treasury 
requests  were  made  by  Stanley  Noel,  the  agent  who  had  monitored  Ben's 
and  Jim's  anti-war  activities  in  Charlotte  for  years,  who  had  broken  into 
Ben's  house  during  his  student  years,  and  who  had  coordinated  both  the 
federal  and  the  Lazy  B  cases  for  the  government.  The  testimony  of  Hood 
and  Washington  was  virtually  the  only  evidence  ever  marshalled  in  court 
against  the  civil  rights  activists. 

Twenty  years  ago  H  oily  wood  screenwriter  Dalton  Trumbo,  writing  of 
other  political  trials— those  of  the  Communist  Party  leaders  during  the 
days  of  the  Smith  Act— described  the  role  of  police  spies: 

No  one  will  seriously  question  that  they  stood  in  relation  to  the  FBI  as 
employees  stand  in  relation  to  a  boss.  A  cook  will  prepare  horsemeat  or  beef 
as  the  restaurateur  requests;  a  carpenter  will  build  a  house  as  solid  or  flimsy  as 
the  contractor  demands;  a  stenographer  will  type  truth  or  fiction  as  his 
employer  requires;  and  if  any  one  of  them  fails  to  produce  what  is  wanted,  he 
will  be  discharged  and  his  income  will  cease.  The  openly  stated  hostility  of  the 
FBI  to  the  Communist  Party  justifies  doubt  that  it  would  pay  spies  to  secure 
information  favorable  to  that  organization.  Indeed,  it  would  not  stretch 
credibility  to  suggest  that  the  FBI  requested  damaging  information  about  the 
Communist  Party,  and  that  any  spy  who  failed  to  secure  it  would  lose  all  value 
to  his  employer  and  quickly  be  separated  from  the  payroll.  The  temptation  to 
insure  continued  income  by  producing  what  is  desired  seems  too  obvious  to 
belabor.  .  .  . 

Many  of  the  witnesses  employed  by  the  prosecution  earn  their  living 
exclusively  by  testifying  in  political  trials.  If  such  trials  stopped  altogether, 
they  would  be  out  of  work.  They  have  no  other  occupation.  Others  who  had 
not  achieved  a  professional  status  nevertheless  lived  at  government  expense 
and  were,  in  addition,  paid  substantial  fees  for  their  testimony.  Their  testi- 
mony was  not,  therefore,  a  disinterested  act  of  citizenship;  it  was  a  commodity 

154 


Four 

for  which  money  had  to  be  paid.  The  government  wanted  to  buy  testimony 
and  the  witnesses  had  it  to  sell  and  a  deal  was  consummated  between  them. 

Over  strenuous  objections  by  the  prosecution,  which  viewed  the  whole 
matter  as  a  morbid  intrusion  into  areas  too  sensitive  for  public  scrutiny,  the 
government  was  obliged  to  reveal  the  precise  sum  it  had  paid  to  its  covin  of 
witnesses.  The  sum  .  .  .  reveals  how  cheaply  an  American  citizen  can  be 
deprived  of  his  liberty.  (The  Time  of  the  Toad:  A  Study  of  Inquisition  in 
America,  New  York,  Harper  &  Row,  1972,  pp.  88,  90.) 

If  we  substitute  the  words  "North  Carolina  civil  rights  movement"  for 
"Communist  Party"  and  "Robert  Mardian's  Justice  Department  and 
Stanley  Noel's  Treasury  Department"  for  "FBI,"  we  have  precisely  the 
role  of  Hood  and  Washington  in  the  Chavis-Grant  federal  trial  and 
Charlotte  Three  case. 

Assistant  U.S.  Attorney  David  Long,  who  prosecuted  the  federal  trial, 
said  that  once  Mardian  and  other  Justice  Department  officials  became 
aware  of  the  case,  they  "were  more  interested  in  this  case  than  in  any 
others  I  prosecuted. . . .  They  had  copies  of  all  documents  in  their  files  in 
Washington  and  that  was  unusual."  U.S.  Attorney  Warren  Coolidge  said 
that  the  monies  paid  to  Hood  and  Washington  were  the  only  instance  of 
assistance  to  federal  witnesses  in  North  Carolina  granted  during  his  four- 
year  tenure.  Throughout  the  Charlotte  Three  trial  months  later,  the 
Observer  reported,  "Federal  agents  kept  in  close  touch  with  the  state 
case."  One  agent  said  within  earshot  of  Judge  Snepp  on  the  last  day  of  the 
trial,  "There's  an  assistant  attorney  general  in  Washington  waiting  to 
hear  what  happened  in  this  case."  The  only  assistant  attorney  general  in 
Washington  that  had  kept  on  top  of  the  prosecution  from  its  inception 
was  Robert  Mardian.  In  keeping  with  the  temper  and  thrust  of  Mardian's 
Intelligence  Evaluation  Committee  and  the  FBI's  Cointelpro  operation, 
all  federal  secret  memos  regarding  payoffs  to  Hood  and  Washington 
referred  to  Ben  and  Jim  as  "known  Black  militants"  or  "two  of  the  top 
militant  leaders  in  the  State  of  North  Carolina," 


S  hall  we  pursue  programs  that  would  result  in  mixing  the  genes  of  the 
Negro  race  with  those  of  the  White  race  and  so  convert  the  population  of 
the  United  States  into  a  mixed-blooded  people?"  This  was  the  burning 
question  that  so  concerned  Professor  Wesley  Critz  George  in  1962.  The 
"programs"  that  were  worrying  this  former  head  of  the  Department  of 
Anatomy  at  the  University  of  North  Carolina  Medical  School,  were 
court  orders  for  school  desegegation.53 

155 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

This  doctor  of  humane  letters,  department  head  at  that  New  South 
showcase  university,  wrote  like  a  hophead  in  sheets  as  he  catalogued  in 
the  name  of  science  virtually  every  crackpot  myth  of  white  racial 
superiority.  Black  people  are  "highly  emotionar  and  "readily  goaded  by 
irresponsible  leaders  into  violence."  If  mixed  with  whites,  they  "seem 
destined  to  bring  about  deterioration  in  the  quality  of  our  genetic  pool." 
George  examined  "frontal  lobes,"  "brain  weight,"  "bone  density"  and  a 
sorcerer's  brew  of  other  standards  and  measures  for  gauging  white 
supremacy.  The  key  test,  however,  the  scale  of  scales,  was  the  IQ  test. 
"Some  of  us  know  Negroes  who  are  intelligent,  industrious,  thrifty  and 
dependable;  but  these  are  not  qualities  that  characterize  large  numbers  of 
the  race.  .  .  .  Indolence,  improvidence  and  consequent  pauperism  are 
qualities  commonly  ascribed  to  them."54  Hence  the  classical  argument 
for  apartheid  or  even  extermination:  People  of  color  are  biologically 
different,  those  differences  are  far  more  than  skin  deep,  "those  people" 
are  mentally  inferior,  racism  is  not  ideological  madness  but  rather  an 
objective  assessment  of  reality. 

Worse,  Black  biological  inferiority  results  in  behavioral  and  moral 
inferiority.  If  "pauperism"  is  a  natural  quality  of  Blacks,  so  too  is  the 
"criminal  instinct."  A  proportionally  greater  number  of  arrests  of  Blacks 
than  of  whites,  wrote  the  good  doctor,  "seems  to  bear  some  relation  to 
differences  in  personality  and  behaviorial  characteristics  of  the  two 
races.  Among  both  ordinary  citizens  and  psychiatrists  one  encounters 
the  oft-expressed  judgement  that  Negroes,  both  in  this  country  and  in 
Africa,  exhibit  a  more  unrestrained  emotional  life  and  lack  of  self- 
discipline  than  whites,  and  it  is  well  known  that  the  rate  of  arrest  and 
conviction  for  crimes  is  much  higher  among  Negroes."55 

While  only  the  occasional  Shockley  will  utter  such  yesteryear  ravings 
these  days,  the  arguments  of  Dr.  George  remain  the  ideological  under- 
pinnings of  North  Carolina's — and  the  nation's — criminal  justice  system. 
Black  people,  by  their  nature,  are  "the  criminal  element."  Not  victims  of 
deprivation  and  discrimination,  they  are  as  Dr.  George  argued,  "indo- 
lent" and  "improvident."  "The  same  qualities  exist  among  some  whites," 
concedes  the  professor,  "but  the  incidence  is  much  higher  among 
Negroes."56 

Racist  pseudoscience  has,  in  much  of  the  country,  given  up  the  IQ 
ghost  as  an  argument  for  white  supremacy.  North  Carolina  remains  a 
throwback  enclave.  The  U.S.  Supreme  Court  ruled  a  few  years  ago  in 
Griggs  et  al.  vs.  Duke  Power  Co.,  that  13  Black  workers  had  been 
wrongly  eliminated  from  better  jobs  through  the  manipulation  of  intel- 
ligence testing.  The  court  decided  that  any  testing  is  unlawful  unless  it 

156 


Four 

clearly  gauges  the  necessary  skills  for  a  particular  job.57  With  IQs  on  the 
defensive  in  the  courts  and  in  science,  the  same  arguments  are  being 
forwarded  in  new  forms;  the  old  "mental  defective"  beans  have  been 
refried,  to  be  served  up  as  "learning  disability." 

The  qualities  that  make  for  learning  disabilities  are  essentially  the 
same  ones  that  North  Carolina's  eugenic  laws  have  always  used  as  the 
rationale  for  sterilization  and  castration,  i.e.,  low  IQ  at  an  early  age,  the 
indication  of  life-long  "mental  defectiveness." 

North  Carolina's  Eugenics  Board  was  set  up  in  1938  during  a  period  of 
great  industrial  expansion.  In  introducing  the  statutes  for  sterilization 
and  experiments  on  the  reproductive  organs  of  working  folk  in  the  state, 
the  Eugenics  Board  argued  in  an  epigraph:  "If  recognized  as  an  integral 
part  of  a  broad  system  of  protection  and  supervision  of  those  unable  to 
meet  unaided  the  responsibilities  of  citizenship  in  a  highly  competitive 
industrial  system,  it  can  be  productive  only  of  good.  "58  (Author's 
emphasis.) 

The  board's  secretary  defined  sterilization  as  "a  means  adopted  by 
organized  society  to  do  for  the  human  race  in  a  humane  manner  what  was 
done  by  Nature  before  modern  civilization,  human  sympathy  and  charity 
intervened  in  Nature's  plans."  Referring  to  Sir  Francis  Galton,  who 
developed  the  pseudoscience  of  eugenics  in  the  late  nineteenth  century, 
North  Carolina's  sterilization  pioneer  said  that  several  "methods  of 
limiting  or  decreasing  breeding  among  the  undesirable  human  stocks 
have  been  advocated"  by  Galton's  followers.  "Among  them  are  segrega- 
tion of  the  unfit;  restrictive  marriage  laws;  birth  control;  eugenic  educa- 
tion; and  human  sterilization."59  For  any  who  might  miss  the  point,  the 
state's  leading  advocate  of  eugenics  quoted  from  the  German  Steriliza- 
tion Statute  of  the  time  (the  time,  for  those  who  lack  historical  perspec- 
tive, is  that  of  the  Third  Reich):  "I.  Whoever  is  afflicted  with  a  hereditary 
disease  can  be  sterilized  by  a  surgical  operation,  if— according  to  the 
experience  of  medical  science — there  is  a  great  probability  that  his 
descendants  will  suffer  from  serious  bodily  or  mental  defects.  Hereditary 
diseases  under  this  law  are:  1)  Hereditary  feeble-mindedness;  2)  Schizo- 
phrenia; 3)  Manic  depressive  insanity;  4)  Hereditary  epilepsy;  5)  Hunt- 
ington's Chorea;  6)  Hereditary  blindness;  7)  Hereditary  deafness;  8) 
Serious  hereditary  bodily  deformities.  11.  Furthermore  those  suffering 
from  alcoholism  can  be  sterilized."60 

Lest  there  be  doubts  or  curiosity  about  just  what  sorts  of  folks  fall  into 
these  "hereditary"  categories,  the  Eugenics  Board  conducted  "A  Study 
Relating  to  Mental  Illness,  Mental  Deficiency,  and  Epilepsy  in  a  Selected 
Rural  County."61  Listing  the  "potential  mentally  ill,  mentally  deficient 

157 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

and  epileptic"  (author's  emphasis)  by  occupation,  these  potentially 
castrated  or  sterilized  subjects  were  farm  laborers,  saw  mill  laborers, 
other  laborers,  textile  workers,  janitorial  and  other  service  workers,  farm 
tenants,  vehicle  drivers,  aircraft  or  munitions  factory  workers,  furniture 
factory  workers.62  That's  all.  Only  "other"  and  "none"  were  also  listed. 
No  banker's  son  or  daughter  could  suffer  from  alcoholism  or  epilepsy 
only  to  face  the  surgeon's  scalpel  or  the  gynecologist's  knot. 

A  look  at  the  Eugenics  Board  statistics  for  the  period  1954  to  1968,  the 
years  of  the  civil  rights  upsurge  from  the  Supreme  Court  decision  on 
school  desegregation  to  the  assassination  of  Martin  Luther  King,  indi- 
cates that  racism  quickly  supplanted  the  class  bias  inherent  in  the 
"science"  of  eugenics.  A  sharp  increase  in  male  supremacy,  already 
deeply  imbedded  in  eugenics,  is  apparent  as  sterilization  of  men  virtually 
ended:63 


Years 

1954-5 

1956-7 

1958-9 

1960-1 

1962-3 

1964-5 

1966-8' 


Number 

of 
Opera- 
tions 

556 

562 

535 

467 

507 

356 

290 


Subjects 

under 
20  Years* 

214 

189 

151 

146 

157 

166 

162 


Male 
131 

77 

43 

14 

14 
6 


Female 
425 
485 
492 
439 
493 
350 
287 


Black 
198 
274 
315 
284 
323 
228 
188 


White 
357 
284 
209 
179 
170 
124 
96 


♦Under  20  means  10-19  years  old. 
**The  1967  state  legislature  removed  epilepsy  as  one  of  the  conditions  for 
sterilization. 

***  Between  1969  and  1973  the  Eugenics  Board  performed  358  more  steriliza- 
tions, but  no  longer  recorded  the  subjects'  sex  and  color.  In  1975  a  new  law  took 
effect  transferring  authorization  to  order  sterilization  from  the  Eugenics  Board 
to  local  district  judges. 


In  recent  years  most  of  the  "eugenics"  sterilizations  were  conducted  on 
adolescent  Black  women.  Consent  of  the  individual  to  be  sterilized  is  not 
necessary  but  is  considered  helpful,  according  to  the  Eugenics  Board's 
1972  "General  Decision  Making  Criteria."  Most  of  those  sterilized  were 
declared  "mentally  defective,"  a  category  to  fit  those  "with  an  I.Q.  of  55," 
according  to  former  Eugenics  Board  executive  secretary  June  Stallings. 

158 


Four 

How  then  explain  the  apparent  mental  defectiveness  in  such  great 
numbers  among  Blacks  as  compared  to  whites — a  ratio  of  10  to  1  in  the 
past  20  years?  Poverty,  says  Ms.  Stallings:  "Scientific  research  shows  that 
infants  with  improper  diets  become  retarded."64 

But  the  Eugenics  Board's  own  statistics  show  a  clear  class,  racial  and 
sexual  bias.  Indeed  the  notion  of  "eugenics"  is  scientifically  akin  to  the 
ideas  that  Communists  eat  babies  and  Jews  have  horns.  The  poor  are 
impoverished  because  that  is  their  nature,  the  class  structure  of  society  is 
"natural,"  things  are  as  they  were  meant  to  be,  that's  human  nature.65 
Black  people,  particularly  Black  women,  are  disproportionately  and 
increasingly  "mentally  defective,"  a  condition  that  results  from  their 
impoverishment,  which  will  not  change.  Attempts  to  change  this  natural 
state  of  being  are  the  efforts  only  of  outside  forces,  "agitators"  in 
policemen's  jargon.  The  political  institutionalization  of  these  ideas  is 
fascism,  writes  Herbert  Aptheker.  "Its  main  propaganda  device  is  ra- 
cism. The  ultimate  logic  of  this  are  crematoria;  people  themselves 
constituting  the  pollution  and  inferior  people  in  particular,  then  cre- 
matoria become  really  vast  sewerage  projects."66  (When  the  United 
Nations  convention  on  genocide  was  adopted  in  1948,  the  fourth  act  of 
five  constituting  genocide  was  listed  as  "imposing  measures  intended  to 
prevent  births  within  the  group.") 

What  is  so  unsettling  about  June  Stalling's  replies  is  that  she  sits,  snug 
as  a  child  in  a  mackinaw,  reducing  questions  of  life  and  death  to 
banalities.  Her  response  is  on  a  par  with  the  woman  who  helped  oversee 
lebensborn,  Hitler's  attempt  to  create  "a  thousand  year  Reich"  by 
breeding  young  German  women  with  oval  faces,  blond  hair  and  blue 
eyes,  narrow  noses  and  thin  mouths,  with  SS  officers  of  similar  features, 
to  arrive  at  a  virtual  pedigreed  Aryan.  Thirty  years  after  the  fall  of  the 
Third  Reich,  this  woman  recalled  that  lebensborn  only  provided  homes 
for  unwed  mothers,  that  the  emphasis  on  Aryan  types  was,  you  know, 
just  a  question  of  fashion.  Some  ages  prefer  blonds,  others  brunettes.67 
Dr.  William  B.  Shockley,  who  has  become  something  of  a  circuit  rider  in 
the  cause  of  eugenics  and  a  homegrown  variety  of  lebensborn,  is  more 
candid.  The  future  is  threatened,  Shockley  argues,  by  dysgenics,  defined 
as  "retrogressive  evolution  through  the  disproportionate  reproduction  of 
the  genetically  disadvantaged.  Or,  down-breeding."  The  doctor  suggests 
bonus  payments  be  offered  "to  persons  with  low  IQs  who  undergo 
voluntary  sterilization."68 

Even  with  its  ring  of  scientific  basis,  "behavior  modification"  is  still 
another  way  of  linking  "criminal  behavior"  to  mental  disorders. 


159 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

Strange  and  mysterious  indeed  are  the  numerous  ways  it  works  its 
wonders  to  perform.  Behavior  modification  has  been  defined  by  one 
psychologist  as  "the  unethical  utilization  of  any  form  of  electrotherapy, 
chemotherapy,  psychosurgery,  psychotherapy,  aversive  therapy,  re- 
wards-and-punishment  or  other  means  or  devices  to  alter  the  mood, 
behavior,  personality  or  psychic  state  of  an  individual  or  a  group."  Tom 
Wicker  writes  that,  "Nothing  arouses  the  fears  of  prison  inmates  more 
than  so-called  'behavior  modification'  programs,  and  no  wonder.  Be- 
havior modification  is  a  catch-all  term  that  can  mean  anything  from 
brain  surgery  to  a  kind  of  'Clockwork  Orange'  mental  conditioning;  it 
usually  includes  drug  experimentation,  and  in  all  too  many  cases  it  is 
aimed  more  nearly  at  producing  docile  prisoners  than  upright  citizens."69 

The  Gideon  for  most  behavior  modifiers  is  B.  F.  Skinner's  Beyond 
Freedom  and  Dignity,  the  thrust  of  which  is  based  on  the  curious 
proposition  that  "housing  is  a  matter  not  only  of  buildings  and  cities  but 
of  how  people  live.  Overcrowding  can  be  corrected  only  by  inducing 
people  not  to  crowd."70  This  suggestion  is  not  too  far  distant  from  that 
which  holds  that  the  napalm  victim  is  in  part  to  blame  for  being  in  the 
wrong  place  at  the  wrong  time.  Further,  we  needn't  ban  napalm  but  must 
teach  the  victim  to  submit  to  the  will  of  the  bomber.  As  for  Skinner's 
"overcrowding"  example,  three  of  his  disciples,  Dr.  Frank  Ervin,  Vernon 
Mark  and  William  Sweet,  bring  his  thoughts  to  their  logical  conclusion 
in  a  letter  to  the  Journal  of  the  American  Medical  Association.  The  letter 
came  in  the  wake  of  the  Detroit  ghetto  rebellion  in  1967,  entitled  "Role  of 
Brain  Disease  in  Riots  and  Urban  Violence,"  and  urged  "diagnosing  the 
many  violent  slum  dwellers  who  have  some  brain  pathology  and  treating 
them"  [with  brain  surgery].71 

Skinner  himself  sees  in  his  "behaviorally  engineered  society"  the 
control  of  the  population  in  the  hands  of  specialists,  "police,  priests, 
owners,  teachers,  therapists  and  so  on."72  Behaviorist  James  V.  McCon- 
nell  of  the  University  of  Michigan  rubs  his  hands  in  gleeful  anticipation: 
"I  believe  the  day  has  come  when  we  can  combine  sensory  deprivation 
with  drugs,  hypnosis  and  astute  manipulation  of  reward  and  punishment 
to  gain  almost  absolute  control  over  an  individual's  behavior."  Preempt- 
ing argument,  the  good  doctor  says,  "There  is  no  reason  to  believe  you 
should  have  the  right  to  refuse  to  acquire  a  new  [personality]  if  the  old 
one  is  anti-social."73 

The  key  is,  who  is  "anti-social"  and  again  for  the  Skinnerist  it  is  the 
napalm  victim  not  the  napalm  bomber  or  manufacturer.  UCLA's  Center 
for  the  Study  and  Reduction  of  Violence  conducted  a  study  of  "the 

160 


Four 


family  structure  and  unrest  among  the  poor"  in  order  to  establish 
"models  designed  to  control  the  activities  of  individuals  and  groups, 
including  rioters."  The  Law  Enforcement  Assistance  Administration 
admits  to  some  400  behavior  modification  projects  in  1974  alone, 
including  a  $130,000  grant  to  the  University  of  Puerto  Rico  for  "neu- 
rological research  into  the  correlations  between  criminal  behavior  and 
brain  damage,"74  although  the  Justice  Department  didn't  suggest  that 
Watergate  resulted  from  mental  retardation  in  the  Oval  Office. 

Mr.  Nixon's  personal  physician,  Dr.  Arnold  Hutschnecker,  proposed 
in  1970  the  psychological  testing  of  children  under  the  age  of  nine  to 
determine  which  were  "criminally  inclined,"  those  with  "violent  tenden- 
cies" to  be  placed  in  special  camps.  This  camp  would  be  an  alternative  to 
slum  reconstruction;  in  Dr.  Hutschnecker's  words,  "a  direct,  immediate, 
effective  way  of  attacking  the  problem  at  its  very  origin,  by  focusing  on 
the  criminal  mind  of  the  child."75  Such  testing  now  takes  place  in  the 
hundreds  of  penitentiaries  across  the  United  States  housing  the  largest 
prison  population  in  the  world,  more  so  in  North  Carolina  than  in  any 
other  state.  That  testing,  called  behavior  modification,  has  not  yet  been 
applied  en  masse  to  children  but  to  their  incarcerated  elders,  while  the 
National  Institute  of  Mental  Health— part  of  the  Department  of  Health, 
Education  and  Welfare — is  funding  several  behavior  modification  pro- 
grams for  juveniles.  Seven  of  the  doctors  tried  at  Nuremberg  were 
hanged  for  experiments  carried  out  on  prisoners,  but  international  law 
apparently  does  not  pertain  to  those  incarcerated  in  U.S.  prisons  and 
jails  who  are  tested  with  a  variety  of  toxins  and  diseases,  subjected  to 
electroshock  and  lobotomies,  induced  to  take  a  host  of  chemicals  and 
drugs,  all  for  the  greater  good  of  research  in  controlling  human  behavior. 


/~\fter  being  found  not  guilty  in  the  federal  case  with  Jim  Grant,  Rev. 
Chavis  was  returned  to  prison  to  await  the  Wilmington  10  trial.  During 
the  trial  with  Jim,  Ben  occupied  a  cell  in  the  Wake  County  Jail  in 
Raleigh.  Now,  after  a  few  days  in  the  New  Hanover  County  Jail  in 
Wilmington,  he  was  moved  to  Raleigh  again,  this  time  to  the  decrepit 
Central  Prison.  The  absurdity  of  being  in  a  maximum  security  prison 
while  legally  innocent  and  awaiting  trial  was  matched  by  the  cruelty  of 
his  surroundings. 

About  a  quarter  of  the  state's  imprisoned  felons  are  held  at  Central 
Prison,  the  state's  only  maximum  security  unit.  Construction  on  the 
prison  began  in  1869  and  still  continues.  As  the  rings  of  a  redwood  trunk 


161 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

reveal  its  history  to  the  practiced  eye,  you  can  tell  Central's  history  by  the 
age  of  each  additional  building.  A  mental  hospital  is  the  latest  structure. 
The  foreboding  red-brick  prison,  with  all  the  attraction  of  a  lanced  boil, 
was  built  on  the  outskirts  of  Raleigh,  but  in  the  century  since  it  was 
completed,  the  town  has  spread  out,  placing  the  complex  right  in  the 
center  of  the  modern  capital  city. 

The  main  unit  was  designed  to  hold  500  men  but  has  housed  twice  as 
many.  In  the  "maxi-maxi"  I  and  J  wings  and  the  west  wing  where  the 
boredom  is  relieved  only  by  the  tedium,  the  500  prisoners  stay  in  their 
cells  24  hours  a  day  except  for  meals  and  minimal  recreation.  In  1968  a 
prison  rebellion  ended  in  seven  prisoner  deaths  and  dozens  of  wounded, 
the  worst  violence  visited  upon  prisoners  in  the  country  until  Attica  in 
1971.  In  charge  of  restoring  the  authority  of  the  prison  administration 
was  Sam  Garrison,  who  is  now  warden  at  Central. 

From  the  moment  the  slight  24-year-old  Rev.  Chavis  walked  through 
the  gate,  he  was  treated  by  the  guards  as  "Big  Bad  Ben,"  a  threat  to  their 
authority.  Just  before  he  arrived,  a  couple  of  inmates  were  brutally 
beaten  and  sent  to  the  prison  hospital  for  refusing  to  cut  their  "natural1' 
hairdos.  Ben's  reputation  preceded  him  with  the  other  prisoners  as  well 
as  with  the  guards.  Some  inmates  approached  Ben  for  help.  Together 
they  drafted  and  filed  suits  in  federal  court  against  the  Department  of 
Corrections,  alleging  discrimination  against  Blacks  for  banning  "natu- 
rals." Though  the  suit  was  eventually  withdrawn,  prison  policy  changed 
and  Ben  himself  was  never  asked  to  cut  his  hair. 

Also  being  held  in  Ben's  wing  was  Joe  Waddell,  a  section  leader  of  the 
Black  Panther  Party  in  Winston-Salem.  Joe  Waddell  was  only  20  years 
old  and,  like  many  young  Panther  members,  enthusiastic  about  the 
Party.  He  would  shout  out  the  "10-point  Program"  of  the  Panthers,  even 
during  the  evening  "quiet  hours."  Such  behavior  was  not  calculated  to 
win  him  a  large  following  among  the  prison  officials.  It  was  known 
throughout  the  prison  that  some  guards  were  laying  for  Joe  Waddell. 
One  day  in  early  May,  Ben,  Joe  and  the  other  E-Block  inmates  returned 
to  their  cells  from  the  recreation  yard.  It  would  be  the  last  time  that  Ben 
and  the  other  prisoners  ever  saw  Joe  Waddell.  The  authorities  claim  that 
he  collapsed  upon  returning  to  his  cell  and  was  taken  to  the  prison 
hospital  where  he  was  pronounced  dead.  The  20-year-old's  death  was 
attributed  to  a  heart  attack  by  the  prison  officials,  but  none  of  the 
inmates  observed  any  signs  of  ill  health  during  the  recreation  period.  In 
any  case,  an  autopsy  to  determine  certain  cause  of  death  became 
impossible  when  the  prison  authorities  removed  all  of  Waddell's  internal 
organs  and  bequeathed  them  to  one  of  the  nearby  state  hospitals  for 
general  experimental  purposes. 


162 


Four 

May  26,  1972,  was  the  first  African  Liberation  Day  celebrated  in  the 
United  States  and  Ben  was  determined  that  Central  Prison  should  not  go 
without  its  commemoration.  His  leadership  of  the  civil  rights  movement 
on  the  outside  made  him  de  facto  a  leader  of  the  prisoners,  who  were 
becoming  politically  conscious  throughout  the  country.  Inmates  from 
the  other  7 1  prison  units  in  the  state,  including  the  women's  prison,  wrote 
to  him  at  Central.  Using  a  post-office  box  in  Raleigh  and  employing  the 
services  of  a  secretary  at  the  Commission  for  Racial  Justice,  he  began  to 
organize  the  United  Black  Prisoners  Freedom  Movement.  Because  the 
only  privileges  allowed  the  prisoners  at  Central  were  eating  and  sleeping, 
the  Black  inmates  agreed  to  forego  the  former  as  an  act  of  solidarity,  and 
held  a  one-day  hunger  strike  on  the  first  African  Liberation  Day  the 
North  Carolina  Department  of  Corrections  had  ever  seen. 

Nine  days  later  Rev.  Chavis  was  transferred  to  the  Pender  County  Jail 
in  Burgaw.  Local  officials  acknowledged  that  a  fair  trial  in  Wilmington 
for  the  Wilmington  10  was  out  of  the  question,  so  the  trial  was  moved  to 
adjoining  rural,  and  predominantly  Black,  Pender  County.  Judge 
Joshua  S.  James  was  selected  to  preside.  Attorney  James  Ferguson  was 
again  at  the  defense  table.  The  prosecution  was  to  be  handled  by  James 
Stroud,  a  young  assistant  solicitor  from  Wilmington  known  for  his 
sarcasm  and  prosecutorial  zeal.  The  Klan-influenced  Hanover  Sun  in  a 
commentary  under  the  banner  headline  "Here's  to  Jay  Stroud''  was  to 
call  the  prosecutor,  "One  of  the  finest  things  that  ever  happened  to  the 
cause  of  law  and  order  and  justice  in  this  area." 

During  pretrial  motions  the  defendants  moved  for  production  of  the 
evidence  and  disclosure  of  the  witnesses  against  them;  to  quash  the 
indictments  based  on  the  race  and  class  bias  of  the  grand  jury;  to 
sequester  prospective  jurors  during  the  questioning  period  preceding 
jury  selection;  to  disclose  evidence  favorable  to  the  defense.  Judge  James 
denied  each  motion  except  the  disclosure  motions,  which  he  granted  in 
part.  When  jury  selection  proceeded  as  scheduled,  a  trial  jury  of  ten 
Blacks  and  two  whites  was  chosen.  That  was  on  Friday,  June  9;  opening 
arguments  were  to  be  heard  on  Monday.  But  Monday  morning  the 
prosecution  moved  for  a  mistrial  because  Jay  Stroud  was  said  to  be 
suffering  from  a  stomach  ache  or  "intestinal  flu,"  although  the  defen- 
dants agreed  unanimously  that  the  racial  composition  of  the  jury  influ- 
enced Stroud's  stomach  more  than  any  bug.  Judge  James  acceded  to  the 
prosecution,  announced  a  mistrial  and  dismissed  the  jury.  A  new  trial 
was  ordered  for  September. 

With  three  more  months  to  the  new  trial  date,  bond  was  reduced  to 
$15,000  for  Ben,  $7,000  or  $8,000  for  the  others.  At  the  end  of  June  they 

163 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

were  released  on  bond.  The  movement  was  in  disarray  after  months  of 
incarceration  of  its  leadership.  Ben  and  the  other  defendants  went  back 
into  the  community  to  begin  to  rebuild.  Ben  returned  to  Raleigh  briefly 
to  organize  a  rally  in  solidarity  with  the  inmates  at  Central  Prison, 
protesting  the  macabre  conditions  from  which  he  had  recently  emerged 
and  in  which  more  than  a  thousand  remained.  On  July  22,  the  day  of  the 
demonstration,  under  orders  of  state  Prisons  Commissioner  Lee 
Bounds,  every  prisoner  at  Central  was  placed  in  lockup.  Machine  guns 
were  mounted  ori  the  walls  of  the  prison  and  aimed  at  the  streets  outside. 
Orders  were  given  to  the  guards  to  shoot  any  outsider  who  came  within 
150  yards  of  the  prison.  "We  are  aware,"  Bounds  later  told  the  press,  "that 
this  sort  of  thing  (the  rally)  could  adversely  affect  our  operations  here,  so 
we  were  ready.  We  took  such  measures  as  I  thought  were  necessary." 
Among  Bounds*  operations  that  might  be  adversely  affected  was  the  last 
remaining  highway  labor  chain  gang  in  the  country. 

In  subsequent  testimony  before  a  hearing  of  the  North  Carolina 
Criminal  Justice  Task  Force,  Rev.  Chavis  reported  that  in  Central 
Prison  the  prison  guards  regularly  hosed  down  prisoners  and  their 
belongings  with  high-pressure  fire  hoses;  and  that  the  prison  had  erected 
an  "animal  cage,"  a  two-by-six-foot  wire  mesh  corridor  from  the  cell- 
block  to  the  cafeteria  through  which  prisoners  must  walk  "while  young 
white  guards  are  constantly  picking  at  prisoners  and  harassing  them." 
Governor  Bob  Scott's  appointed  secretary  of  the  Department  of  Re- 
habilitation, George  Randall,  said  he  would  not  debate  "with  a  man  who 
doesn't  know  the  facts  about  Central  Prison." 

But  Bounds  admitted  that  the  fire  hoses  were  used,  although  "only  for 
control,"  not  punishment.  Bounds  took  credit  for  introducing  the  "ani- 
mal cage,"  again  as  an  advanced  method  of  control.  Of  Bounds  it  can  be 
said,  as  Saki  wrote  of  Bernard  Shaw,  "He  had  discovered  himself  and 
gave  ungrudgingly  of  his  discovery  to  the  world."  Bounds  did  take  issue 
with  Rev.  Chavis  on  one  point:  "The  impact  of  the  conditions  of  our 
prison  system,"  argued  the  vexed  Mr.  Bounds,  "rests  evenly  on  whites 
and  Blacks." 

In  August  Ben  had  to  return  to  Portsmouth  to  stand  trial  for  the 
charges  growing  out  of  his  January  arrest — running  a  stop  sign,  failing  to 
show  a  car  registration  card,  disruption  of  public  schools.  When  Ben 
showed  that  he  had  not  been  driving  the  car  at  the  time  of  arrest,  the 
traffic  charges  were  dropped.  But  the  court  pursued  the  disruption  of  the 
schools  charge.  The  magistrate,  referring  to  Ben  as  a  "trespassing  pied 
piper,"  found  him  guilty  and  sentenced  him  to  a  year  in  prison  and  a 
$2,000  fine.  Early  the  next  year  Ben  would  appeal  the  decision  to  a 

164 


Four 

Hustlings  Court,  where  a  jury  would  reverse  the  decision  and  find  him 
not  guilty.  But  for  the  next  few  months  he  would  temporarily  have  his 
first  conviction. 

If  the  North  Carolina  civil  rights  movement  had  been  set  back  by  the 
arrests  and  prosecution  of  its  leadership,  the  same  could  not  be  said  of 
Leroy  Gibson's  Rights  of  White  People,  which  continued  to  flower  in  the 
eastern  part  of  the  state.  With  Rev.  Chavis  back  on  the  streets,  ROWP 
had  its  number  one  enemy  at  large  again.  Ben  began  to  get  telephone 
threats  at  his  home  in  Oxford  and  at  the  Commission  office  in  Raleigh. 
State  law  enforcement  intelligence  agents  approached  him  to  say  they 
had  information  that  a  group  of  Wilmington  businessmen,  upset  over  the 
loss  of  millions  of  dollars  and  new  investments,  had  put  out  a  $10,000 
contract  on  his  life.  The  agents  were  at  a  loss  for  an  answer  when  Ben 
asked  why  they  weren't  arresting  these  businessmen  for  conspiracy  to 
murder,  but  they  warned  Ben  against  returning  to  Wilmington. 

On  August  31  Ben  had  to  be  in  Wilmington  to  consult  with  his  co- 
defendants.  That  evening  he  returned  to  Raleigh  to  work  on  some  papers 
at  the  Commission  office  in  preparation  for  the  upcoming  Wilmington  10 
trial.  Arriving  in  the  capital  city  at  10:30  p.m.,  Rev.  Chavis  went  to  his 
office  in  the  downtown  Odd  Fellows  building.  Around  I  a.m.  he  came 
back  downstairs,  got  into  his  car  and  headed  for  home.  After  driving  for 
three  blocks,  he  saw  a  blue  flame,  like  an  acetalyne  torch  coming  from 
under  the  front  seat.  He  braked  the  car,  opened  the  door  and  jumped  out. 
The  whole  interior  of  the  car  burst  into  flames,  which  enveloped  the 
entire  vehicle  in  a  minute's  time.  An  incendiary  explosion  knocked  out 
the  windows  and  threw  Ben  back.  An  ambulance  came  and  rushed  him  to 
the  hospital  with  first-,  second-  and  third-degree  burns  on  his  right  arm. 
Meanwhile,  the  remains  of  the  car  were  taken  to  the  Raleigh  police 
garage.  The  city  police  announced  they  were  turning  the  investigation 
over  to  the  SB1.  The  SBI  in  turn  passed  the  case  on  to  the  FBI,  who 
turned  it  over  to  the  Treasury  Department's  Bureau  of  Alcohol,  Tobacco 
and  Firearms.  Stanley  Noel,  who  organized  the  prosecution  of  Ben  and 
Jim  and  the  Charlotte  Three,  was  put  in  charge  of  the  investigation. 
Apparently  the  ATF  hit  a  snag  in  this  investigation,  for  no  report  was 
ever  released,  let  alone  a  prosecution  developed.  The  local  police,  SBI 
and  FBI  also  remained  silent. 


165 


Five 

Law!  What  do  I  care  about  the  law?  Hain't  I  got  the 

Cornelius  Vanderbilt 

"Shut  up, "  he  explained. 

Ring  Lardner 


power? 


N 

JL  ^  orth  Carolina's  prison  system  is  a  hundred  years  ahead  at  being 
behind.  With  only  five  million  people  in  the  entire  state,  there  are  77  state 
prisons,  the  most  of  any  state  in  the  country.  Upwards  of  14,000  inmates 
crowd  the  various  units,  the  highest  per  capita  prison  population  in  the 
United  States.  New  York,  for  example,  a  state  with  four  times  the 
number  of  people,  has  15,000  prisoners  or  7  percent  more  than  North 
Carolina.  The  U.S.  Justice  Department  listed  the  Tarheel  state  as  having 
the  highest  number  of  inmates  per  100,000  population — 183 — at  the  end 
of  1973.  North  Dakota  with  the  lowest  ratio  had  28  inmates  per  100,000 
population.  In  the  years  since  that  report,  North  Carolina  has  consoli- 
dated its  hold  on  its  leading  position  in  institutionalized  repression, 
jailing  more  of  its  people  than  any  other  state,  and  jailing  them  for  longer 
terms.1 

If  the  country  as  a  whole  had  North  Carolina's  ratio,  there  would  be 
more  than//w  million  prisoners  in  the  United  States.  Disturbing  as  is  the 
overall  figure,  things  are  much  worse  for  young  people,  and  for  Blacks 
and  Indians.  In  1974,  almost  42  percent  of  the  state's  prisoners  were 
under  25  years  old.  The  ratio  per  100,000  North  Carolinians  of,  for 
example,  24  years  of  age,  was  830,  more  than  four  times  the  statewide 
total  that  leads  the  nation.  For  Black  men  the  ratio  was  1,040  per  100,000, 
or  five  and  a  half  times  the  general  total.  Thus,  more  than  one  percent  of 
all  Black  men  in  North  Carolina  are  imprisoned.2  In  addition,  more  than 
16,000  North  Carolinians  (surpassing  the  total  prison  population)  enter 
county  and  city  jails  each  month.3 

As  the  state  shoe-horns  several  thousand  additional  new  inmates  into 
its  prisons  which  contain  only  10,000  beds,  the  Raleigh  Archipelago  has 
become  a  hell  without  fire.  Four  and  a  half  thousand  prisoners  have  no 
beds.  In  1974, 650  prisoners  under  18,  some  as  young  as  14,  were  mixed  in 
the  general  prison  population.4  State  corrections  officials  have  proposed 
the  construction  of  an  additional  four  prisons  to  house  another  3,000 
inmates.  Official  state  estimates  are  that  by  1983,  the  shortage  of  beds  for 
medium-custody  inmates  alone  will  be  6,000,  as  a  "conservative"  figure. 

169 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

The  estimates  are  based  "upon  past  experience  and  the  assumption  that 
things  will  remain  as  they  presently  exist,"  a  commentary  at  once  on 
bureaucratic  smugness  and  on  a  stagnant  society.5 

Women  prisoners  have  special  problems.  North  Carolina  laws  set  a 
minimum  prison  sentence  of  30  days  for  men,  six  months  for  women.  A 
serious  case  of  unequal  protection  exists,  with  decentralized  programs  of 
dispersal  for  men  prisoners  through  the  many  prison  units,  whereas 
women  are  centralized  at  the  lone  state  women's  prison  in  Raleigh, 
making  family  visits  more  difficult  as  well  as  possibly  being  unconstitu- 
tional. 

Another  possible  violation  of  women  prisoners'  constitutional  rights  is 
the  use  by  prison  authorities  of  pelvic  examinations  allegedly  to  search 
for  contraband,  which  could  be  unreasonable  search,  cruel  and  unusual 
punishment  and  an  invasion  of  privacy. 

In  June  1975,  these  and  other  grievances  at  the  Women's  Correctional 
Center  resulted  in  more  than  four  days  of  disturbances  that  left  a  total  of 
32  inmates  injured  at  the  hands  of  various  prison  and  state  police  agents. 
Prisoner  complaints  included  working  conditions  in  the  prison  laundry, 
where  they  worked  eight-hour  days  on  aging  equipment  while  tempera- 
tures often  reached  120  degrees.  State  Prisons  deputy  director  Walter 
Kautsky  said,  "The  breakdown  occurred  because  the  inmates  were 
allowed  to  have  access  to  mop  handles."  After  the  protest  was  broken,  60 
women  were  placed  in  "complete  segregation,"  and  33  others  were 
transferred  to  the  previously  all-male  prison  at  Morgantown. 

Unless  things  change  soon,  "it  is  likely  that  federal  courts  will  intervene 
in  the  operation"  of  the  state  prisons,  according  to  a  report  by  the  North 
Carolina  Commission  on  Correctional  Programs.  The  report  found  that 
the  state  prison  system  meets  few  of  the  standards  set  by  the  federal  court 
which  took  control  of  the  Alabama  prison  system  out  of  that  state's 
hands.  Among  the  report's  findings  were  that  71  of  the  North  Carolina 
system's  77  prison  units  are  overcrowded;  that  only  six  North  Carolina 
units  meet  the  court  standard  for  Alabama;  that  only  one  inmate  should 
be  confined  in  a  single  cell  with  a  minimum  of  60  square  feet;  that  if  the 
Alabama  standards  were  imposed,  North  Carolina's  system  could  handle 
no  more  than  7,000  prisoners,  less  than  half  those  incarcerated. 

North  Carolina's  77  prisons  are  part  of  the  heritage  of  the  highway 
chain-gang  system.  The  state  boasts  one  of  the  finest  highway  systems  in 
the  country  and  past  chief  executives  and  general  assemblies  are  known 
to  historians  as  "good  roads  governors"  and  "good  roads  legislatures." 
But  rarely  mentioned  is  the  fact  that  for  more  than  a  century  those  roads 
were  built  and  maintained  by  convict  labor. 

170 


Five 

Before  the  Civil  War,  North  Carolina  had  no  state  prison  and  held  few 
prisoners.  Some  counties  maintained  jails  which  meted  out  punishment 
to  offenders.  No  provisions  existed  for  employing  the  labor  of  prisoners, 
except  that  free  Blacks  were  hired  out  to  pay  fines  and  costs.  Instead  of 
imprisonment,  law  officials  employed  the  pillory,  the  whipping  post  and 
the  branding  iron;  the  death  penalty  was  also  used  promiscuously  for 
dozens  of  offenses.  Bigamy  was  punishable  by  branding  with  a  hot  iron 
the  letter  B  upon  the  cheek.  First  offense  manslaughter  brought  an  M 
burned  into  the  "brawn  of  the  left  thumb."  Perjury  in  a  capital  case 
required  that  "the  offender  shall,  instead  of  the  public  whipping,  have  his 
right  ear  cut  off  and  severed  entirely  from  his  head,  and  nailed  to  the 
pillory  by  the  sheriff,  there  to  remain  until  sundown."  Whipping  was 
often  the  punishment  for  free  Blacks  for  the  same  crimes  for  which  whites 
were  fined.6 

In  the  aftermath  of  the  war,  the  North  Carolina  constitution  of  1868 
established  the  state  penitentiary  and  declared  that  the  only  forms  of 
punishment  in  the  state  should  be  death,  imprisonment  with  or  without 
hard  labor  and  fine.  Actually  the  new  constitution,  considered  reformist 
by  official  state  historians,  was  a  Confederate  relic.  A  crime  wave  swept 
the  state  after  the  Civil  War,  they  write,  in  which  "there  were  added  to  the 
crimes  by  white  people,  which  were  the  natural  aftermath  of  war,  the 
offenses  of  the  newly  liberated  Negroes  confused  by  the  responsibilities 
of  freedom."  Widespread  thievery  of  farm  products  "was  partly  due  to 
the  natural  propensities  of  the  Negroes,  intensified  by  their  necessities."7 
Such  was  the  rationale  by  which  state-sanctioned  chattel-slavery  before 
the  war  became,  after  the  defeat  of  the  Confederacy,  state-sanctioned 
slave  labor  in  the  name  of  prison  reform:  "For  a  number  of  years  the 
great  majority  of  prisoners  in  both  state  and  county  prison  systems  were 
Negroes."8 

In  1874,  for  example,  190  Blacks  were  sentenced  to  state  prison, 
compared  with  24  whites.  The  next  year,  395  Blacks  went  to  the  state 
prison;  only  45  whites  were  so  sentenced.  In  1898,  of  952  state  prisoners, 
846  were  Black,  105  were  white  and  one  was  Indian.9  The  chain  gang 
developed  in  this  context.  Before  the  Civil  War,  the  only  legal  provision 
for  sheriffs  hiring  out  labor  were  those  concerning  free  Blacks.  Early  in 
the  nineteenth  century,//-^  Blacks  were  sold  at  auction  until  their  labor 
paid  back  court-ordered  fines  and  costs.10  The  first  recorded  road  gang 
was  organized  by  the  military  government  at  the  end  of  the  war.  This 
story  appeared  in  the  Raleigh  Daily  Standard,  September  27,  1865: 

The  military  on  yesterday  picked  up  a  large  number  of  gentlemen  of  color, 
who  were  loitering  about  the  street  corners,  apparently  much  depressed  by 


171 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

ennui  and  general  lassitude  of  the  nervous  system,  and,  having  armed  them 
with  spades  and  shovels,  set  them  to  play  at  street  cleaning  for  the  benefit  of 
their  own  health  and  the  health  of  the  town  generally.  This  is  certainly  a  "move 
in  the  right  direction";  for  the  indolent,  lazy  Sambo,  who  lies  about  in  the 
sunshine  and  neglects  to  seek  employment  by  which  to  make  a  living,  is 
undoubtedly  "the  right  man  in  the  right  place"  when  enrolled  in  the  spade  and 
shovel  brigade. 

Immediately  after  the  Civil  War,  the  legislature  of  1866-7  authorized 
justices  of  the  peace  to  sentence  offenders  to  work  in  chain  gangs  on 
public  roads  and  railroads.  As  has  been  shown,  the  great  majority  of 
these  prisoners  were  Black.  The  consolidated  statutes  of  1919  said  that 
"Counties  and  towns  may  hire  out  certain  prisoners."  Statute  1356  read 
in  part: 

The  board  of  commissioners  of  the  several  counties,  within  their  respective 
jurisdictions,  or  such  other  county  authorities  therein  as  may  be  established, 
and  the  mayor  and  intendant  of  the  several  cities  and  towns  of  the  state,  have 
power  to  provide  under  such  rules  and  regulations  as  they  may  deem  best  for 
the  employment  on  the  public  streets,  public  highways,  public  works,  or  other 
labor  for  individuals  or  corporations,  of  all  persons  imprisoned  in  the  jails  of 
their  respective  counties,  cities  and  towns,  upon  conviction  of  any  crime  or 
misdemeanor,  or  who  may  be  committed  to  jail  for  failure  to  enter  into  bond 
for  keeping  the  peace  or  for  good  behavior.  ...  11 

The  law  served  as  the  basis  for  the  custom  of  allowing  county 
commissioners  to  hire  out  prison  labor  to  private  individuals  and 
corporations,  a  form  of  peonage  as  common  to  North  Carolina  and  the 
South  as  rocking  chairs  on  a  screened  front  porch  in  summertime. 

The  Carolina  chain  gang  contains  the  roots  of  the  present  prison 
misery.  The  vermin,  the  epidemics  of  tuberculosis  and  syphillis,  hot  and 
cold  running  dysentery,  the  random  cruelty  and  torture  by  the  "walking 
boss,"  the  reported  average  life  expectancy  of  five  years  for  road-gang 
prisoners— these  are  the  legacy  of  North  Carolina's  "corrections"  system. 

Boyd  Payton,  the  textile  workers'  leader  imprisoned  in  the  1960s  for 
his  leadership  of  the  Harriet-Henderson  Cotton  Mill  strike,  described  his 
days  on  a  modem  road  gang  in  his  book  Scapegoat.  As  the  prisoners  rode 
to  their  assignment: 

As  we  bounced  along  on  the  boards  fastened  around  the  cage  and  intended  for 
seats,  the  other  members  of  the  squad  began  my  education  as  member  of  the 
"gun-squad."  They  listed  the  "don'ts"  forme  as  follows:  (1)  Don't  let  the  guard 
hear  you  cussin'  or  you'll  get  30  days  in  the  hole;  (2)  Don't  cross  the  road  from 

172 


Five 

where  you're  workin'  or  the  guard  can  shoot  you  down  for  attempted  escape; 
(3)  Don't  make  any  sudden  moves  like  jumpin'  or  runnin'  or  stoopin'  over  like 
you  was  pickin'  up  a  rock,  or  the  guard  can  shoot  you  down;  (4)  Don't,  never, 
approach  within  10  feet  of  the  guard  or  he  can  shoot  you  down;  (5)  Don't 
stoop  over  to  tie  your  shoe  without  gettin'  permission  'cause  the  guard  might 
not  feel  as  urgent  about  it  as  you  do;  (6)  If  you  do  get  permission  to  go  for  a 
"crap"  be  prepared  for  the  foreman  to  be  standin'  over  you  with  a  revolver  and 
be  careful  not  to  make  any  sudden  moves  or  he  can  shoot  you  down;  (7)  Don't, 
never,  speak  or  wave  to  anyone  who  passes,  or  you'll  go  to  the  hole;  (8)  Don't 
ever  get  more  than  10  feet  ahead  or  10  feet  behind  the  rest  of  the  squad;  (9) 
Don't  ever  pick  up  an  apple  or  a  nut  without  permission  of  the  guard  and  don't 
ever  take  anything  from  anyone  passin'  by. 

The  foreman  was  riding  in  the  cab  with  the  driver.  I  was  told  that  they  were 
both  employed  by  the  highway  department  but  were  under  the  jurisdiction  of 
prison  officials  while  supervising  prisoners.  "The  guard  is  the  ktop  dog.'  they 
told  me,  "but  both  the  guard  and  the  foreman  like  to  be  called  Captain." 

Then,  as  now,  the  prison  labor  had  a  singular  purpose:  "Without 
doubt,"  wrote  two  Chapel  Hill  professors  half  a  century  ago,  "the  motive 
underlying  the  establishment  and  the  continuance  of  the  county  chain 
gang  is  primarily  economic.  .  .  .  This  system  offers  to  the  county  an 
apparent  source  of  profit  in  the  form  of  cheap  labor  for  use  in  the 
building  and  maintenance  of  roads.  The  average  county  official  in  charge 
of  such  prisoners  thinks  far  more  of  exploiting  their  labor  in  the  interest 
of  good  roads,  than  of  any  corrective  or  reformatory  value  in  such 
methods  of  penal  treatment.  .  .  .  The  local  criminal  courts  tend  to  be 
looked  upon  as  feeders  for  the  chain  gang,  and  there  is  evidence  in  some 
instances  that  the  mill  of  criminal  justice  grinds  more  industriously  when 
the  convict  road  force  needs  new  recruits."12 

Convict  chain  gangs  were  not  ended  in  North  Carolina  until  July  1973, 
and  prison  authorities  have  not  dismissed  the  possibility  of  their  return. 
State  legislature  discussions  of  the  subject  turn  on  the  question  of 
whether  prisoners  should  be  paid  for  their  labor,  even  nominally.  They 
never  have  yet  in  the  state,  and  with  economic  hard  times  in  the  country, 
the  likelihood  is  that  they  won't  soon  be  paid.  During  the  Great 
Depression  of  the  1930s,  the  state  prison  system  became  an  appendage  of 
the  Highway  Commission,  both  to  cut  down  on  the  cost  of  government, 
and  because  the  primary  goal  of  the  prison  system  was  to  maintain 
a  10,000-strong  highway-construction  army.  In  the  1950s,  Governor 
Luther  Hodges  found  that  machines  could  build  roads  in  less  time  and  at 
lower  costs  than  hand  labor,  that  only  6,000  prisoners  "could  be  econom- 
ically employed  in  road  work."  He  decided  to  set  up  a  prison  industries 

173 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

program  to  find  new  areas  for  this  huge  workforce  that  was  forced  to 
labor  without  pay.  "Prison  industries — as  long  as  they  did  not  compete 
with  private  industry — were  recognized  as  being  able  to  serve  a  useful 
and  profitable  part  on  the  operation  of  our  prison  system,"  wrote  Hodges 
later.13  A  soap  plant  was  put  into  operation;  a  metal  plant  began  making 
license  plates;  a  sewing  room  was  built  at  Women's  Prison.  Still  the  chain 
gangs  continued  and  by  1970,  North  Carolina  could  brag  of  the  finest 
highway  system  in  the  country,  with  more  than  68  percent  of  all  road 
mileage  being  paved.  This  compared  favorably  with  the  national  average 
of  44.4  percent,14  contributed  heavily  to  the  state's  New  South  reputa- 
tion, attracted  still  more  industry  and  made  Charlotte  the  overland 
trucking  hub  of  the  Southeast. 

Most  of  the  state's  labor  camps  have,  in  their  visitors  room,  inscribed 
and  framed,  the  following  exhortation,  entitled  "Loyalty":  "If  you  work 
for  a  man,  in  heaven's  name,  work  for  him,  speak  well  of  him  and  stand 
by  the  institution  he  represents." 

With  the  production  of  New  South  propaganda  in  itself  becoming 
nearly  a  light  industry  under  Hodges,  still  another  "reform"  was  passed 
by  the  1957  General  Assembly  with  the  prisoner  work-release  program. 
Under  recommendation  of  the  sentencing  judge,  misdemeanor  prisoners 
could  be  allowed  to  work  on  regular  jobs  outside  the  prison,  provided 
they  returned  each  night  and  each  weekend  to  their  cells.  North  Carolina 
became  the  first  state  to  introduce  this  "new  star  in  the  correctional 
firmament,"  in  the  words  of  critic  Jessica  Mitford.  But  the  work-release 
program  is  also  "a  surprisingly  useful  and  practical  method  of  supple- 
menting county  jail  and  state  prison  budgets,  providing  sinecures  for  an 
inordinant  number  of  guards  and  other  'correctional'  employees,  and 
supplying  cheap  labor  to  nonunion  employers."15  By  1974,  there  were 
some  2,000  North  Carolina  prisoners  on  work-release,  the  largest  num- 
ber and  percentage  of  any  state. 

The  first  state  to  develop  work-release  on  a  statewide  basis,  North 
Carolina  is  also  the  first  to  allow  sentencing  a  prisoner  directly  to  work- 
release.  Alongside  the  work-release  program  comes  greater  involvement 
of  police  and  correctional  systems  in  the  community  outside  of  prison. 
Several  government  agencies  and  private  industries  have  planned  pro- 
grams for  prison  industrial  work  directed  at  returning  prison  industries 
to  the  private  sector.  One  government  report  recommended  "adoption  of 
programs  whereby  private  enterprise  establishes  factories  manned  en- 
tirely by  committed  offenders."  North  Carolina  is  a  recipient  of  the 
federal  Law  Enforcement  Assistance  Administration's  "Private  Sector 
Correctional  Program,"  coordinating  private  industry  and  prison  work 

174 


Five 

programs.  At  a  time  when  the  state  could  find  no  jobs  for  free  labor, 
private  concerns  rushed  to  offer  3,200  jobs  to  convicts  and  parolees.  A 
man  who  has  to  face  prison  with  its  arbitrary  discipline  at  the  end  of  each 
workday  makes  the  "ideal"  worker.  A  1974  statewide  survey  of  business 
attitudes  found  that  industry  liked  work-release:  "The  work  release 
prisoner . . .  may  be  a  more  conscientious,  dependable  employee  than  the 
average  free  man."16 

A  system  of  forced  labor  has  always  been  required  by  U.S.  capitalism 
for  the  production  of  certain  "unprofitable"  products;  to  regulate  the 
activities  of  a  selected  workforce  which  in  turn  could  be  used  as  a  lever  on 
the  wages  of  the  workforce  at  large;  and  to  serve  as  a  laboratory  for 
development  of  new  methods  of  coercion.  Prison  labor  is  the  only 
domestic  sector  that  produces  a  profit  equal  to  or  in  excess  of  that 
enjoyed  by  multinational  companies  in  the  most  exploited  countries. 
Working  without  pay,  under  threat  of  severe  discipline  without  restraint, 
prison  labor  earns  private  industry  and  government  nearly  20  percent 
profit  a  year.  North  Carolina  leads  the  country  in  prison  industrial 
output  per  capita.17  In  1973,  with  an  average  1,000  prisoners  working  in 
the  11  prison  industries,  the  Prison  Enterprise  System  realized  net  profits 
in  excess  of  $1.5  million.18 

One  explanation  of  North  Carolina's  having  the  largest  per  capita 
prison  population  in  the  country — 12th  in  state  population,  Tarheel 
prisons  house  the  5th  largest  prison  population — is  that  it  is  the  only  state 
in  the  country  that  houses  misdemeanor  offenders  in  the  state  prisons. 
One  third  of  all  state  prisoners  and  two  thirds  of  all  new  prisoners  in  a 
given  year  are  misdemeanants,  including  public  drunks.19  The  great 
majority  of  sentence-serving  misdemeanants  are  mixed  with  the  felon 
prisoners.  Infractions  of  prison  rules  will  bring  maximum  security  to 
bear  on  misdemeanants  as  well  as  felons.  And  while  guards  can't  shoot  at 
a  fleeing  misdemeanant,  they  can  shoot  at  fleeing  felons,  and  fleeing 
prison  is  a  felony— one  of  those  Catch-22  provisions  so  vital  to  the 
mishegoss  of  corrections  systems.20 

But  the  imprisoned  misdemeanant  population  does  not  entirely  ac- 
count for  North  Carolina's  national  lead  in  prison  population,  for  the 
state  also  has  the  highest  per  capita  felon  population,  according  to  state 
corrections  commissioner  Ralph  Edwards,  who  comments,  "Maybe  we 
have  better  law  enforcement."21  Actually  the  lengths  of  sentences  are 
getting  longer  and  the  felon  population  is  increasing,  including  among 
young  prisoners.  In  1969,  the  state  prisons  admitted  300  under-18  felons; 
in  1973,  the  number  had  almost  tripled  to  850.22  It  is  estimated  that  by 
1979  the  1974  ratio  of  one  misdemeanant  to  three  felons  will  decline  to  the 


175 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

ratio  of  one  misdemeanant  to  five  felons,  and  by  1984  the  ratio  will  be  one 
misdemeanant  to  thirteen  felons.23  The  projections  suggest  not  leniency 
toward  misdemeanants  but  quite  the  opposite — still  harsher  sentencing 
in  years  to  come.  Meanwhile,  North  Carolina  has  not  yet  instituted  "time 
off  for  good  behavior,"  a  common  practice  in  other  states. 

As  barbaric  as  its  treatment  of  adult  offenders  is,  the  state's  approach 
to  juveniles  in  trouble  requires  a  Victor  Hugo  to  adequately  describe  its 
horrors.  Children  diagnosed  as  having  "learning  disability"  are  "tracked" 
into  juvenile  prisons.  Duke  University  psychiatrist  J.  S.  Gallemore 
complains  that  the  state's  juvenile  justice  system  is  retrograde  because  it 
holds  that  criminality  is  synonymous  with  mental  illness,  and  that 
punishment  is  rehabilitative.24  Punishment  of  children  in  North  Car- 
olina, is  endemic  in  the  schools.  State  law  provides  that  "Principals, 
teachers,  substitute  teachers,  voluntary  teachers,  teachers'  aids  and 
assistant  and  student  teachers  in  the  public  schools  .  .  .  may  use 
reasonable  force  in  the  exercise  of  lawful  authority  to  restrain  or  correct 
pupils  and  maintain  order";  and  further,  that  "No  county  or  city  board  of 
education  or  district  committee  shall  promulgate  or  continue  in  effect  a 
rule,  regulation  or  by-law  which  prohibits  the  use  of  such  force." 

In  1911,  North  Carolina  established  in  state  law  the  principle  of  parens 
patriae  (the  state's  right  to  be  a  substitute  parent)  on  the  basis  of 
providing  for  children  or  juveniles  who,  "by  reason  of  infancy,  defective 
understanding,  or  other  misfortune  or  infirmity,  are  unable  to  take  care 
of  themselves."25  (Author's  emphasis.)  Consequently,  North  Carolina 
imprisons  more  juveniles  per  capita  than  any  other  state,  according  to 
official  figures.26  By  1973  the  state  was  spending  more  than  $9,000  to 
house  each  imprisoned  child,  more  than  the  cost  of  sending  the  same 
child  to  Duke  University  with  summer  vacation  in  Europe  and  weekly 
sessions  with  a  private  psychologist.27 

Mason  Thomas,  a  leading  juvenile  corrections  expert  at  the  University 
of  North  Carolina's  Institute  of  Government,  a  sort  of  extension  school 
for  state  and  local  officials,  says  that  "the  prison  and  juvenile  training 
systems  have  been  a  method  of  separating  powerless,  poor  Black  people 
from  the  general  population.  The  tendency  to  punishment  is  a  way  of 
continuing  segregation."28  In  a  brief  history  of  the  juvenile  corrections 
system  in  North  Carolina,  Thomas  wrote  that  a  prime  purpose  of  the 
juvenile  prisons  or  training  schools  was  for  children  to  "receive  moral 
training  and  develop  middle  class  values."29  The  age  of  criminal  respon- 
sibility was  fixed  at  seven;  children  of  this  age  could  be  prosecuted  in  the 
criminal  courts.30  The  North  Carolina  Constitution  of  1868  required  the 
building  of  a  state  penitentiary  which  imprisoned  children  alongside 

176 


Five 

adult  offenders  from  the  beginning.  Only  executive  clemency — Thomas 
cites  a  governor  excusing  from  prison  a  youth  "sentenced  to  three  years 
for  stealing  a  goose  valued  at  ten  cents" — prevented  children  eight  years 
old  or  more  from  incarceration  at  Raleigh's  Central  Prison.31  Central 
Prison  was  built  by  prison  labor  and  that  same  labor  was  sold  or 
contracted  to  outsiders  in  order  to  make  the  prison  self-sufficient.  When 
the  labor  of  women  and  children  in  prison  proved  not  to  be  as  saleable, 
the  authorities  moved  to  create  a  women's  prison  and  the  juvenile  justice 
system.32 

Juvenile  courts  and  "training  schools"  have  been  part  of  North 
Carolina  law  since  1919,  although  juvenile  offenders  can  and  are  still  sent 
to  Central  and  other  state  prisons  by  the  courts.  Undefined  but  included 
in  North  Carolina  statutes  as  falling  under  the  court's  jurisdiction  are 
children  under  16  years  old  in  the  following  categories:  delinquent, 
truant,  unruly,  wayward,  misdirected,  disobedient  to  parents  or  beyond 
their  control  or  in  danger  of  becoming  so,  neglected,  dependent  upon 
public  support,  destitute,  homeless,  abandoned,  or  whose  custody  is 
subject  to  controversy.33  A  1972  state  law,  which  must  count  as  a  high 
point  for  a  legislature  almost  wholly  given  over  to  lows,  and  in  the 
estimate  of  penal  reformers,  is  a  considerable  advance  in  North  Carolina, 
requires  that  children  less  than  10  years  old  or  those  whose  offenses 
would  not  be  considered  crimes  if  committed  by  adults,  cannot  be 
imprisoned  until  the  court  has  exhausted  all  community-level  alternative 
services.  One  of  the  more  controversial  questions  before  the  state 
legislature  is  the  continuing  incarceration  of  juveniles  for  being  "un- 
disciplined," i.e.,  for  committing  acts  which  are  not  considered  criminal 
for  adults.  Recent  "reforms,"  for  example  regarding  truancy  from 
school,  prevent  imprisonment  for  first-time  truants;  these  are  placed  on 
probation  and  are  incarcerated  "only"  if  they  break  probation.34 

In  a  1973  state  legislative  session  dominated  by  "special  interests"  of 
the  I'll-back-your-highway-You-support-my-bridge  type,  it  was  consid- 
ered another  small  step  for  mankind  when  a  statute  passed  limiting  to 
five  days  the  jailing  of  juveniles  without  a  hearing.35  Once  imprisoned, 
however,  no  such  limits  exist.  An  earlier  Bar  Association  report  found 
that  "juveniles  who  disrupt  a  class  [in  training  school]  are  automatically 
locked  up  for  five  days"  in  segregation  or  solitary  confinement.36  Mason 
Thomas  argues  that  "people — especially  children — are  locked  up  even 
though  they  pose  no  threat  to  anyone.  Judges  aren't  tuned  into  people's 
needs — economic,  personal,  psychological.  We  deal  with  social  prob- 
lems by  punishment.  Part  of  this  comes  from  our  bible-belt  morality.  We 
separate  children  from  their  families  in  order  to  'rehabilitate'  them 


177 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 


because  the  families  don't  have  'middle-class  values  and  morality,' 
whatever  that  means."37 

The  1975  General  Assembly,  in  a  holiday  of  generosity,  passed  a  bill 
stating  that  youths  under  16  must  be  held  in  a  special  "holdover"  section 
of  jail,  isolated  from  older  prisoners,  and  for  not  more  than  five  days, 
before  transfer  to  a  juvenile  prison.  Until  1975,  youth  offenders  of  14  and 
15  years  of  age  and  sometimes  younger  could  be  held  in  county  jails  and 
placed  in  state  prisons.  Part  of  the  reason  was  that  there  are  only  eight 
juvenile  "homes"  in  the  state  but  190  holding  jails.38 

One  of  those  "homes,"  the  apple  of  the  eyes  of  North  Carolina's 
professional  penologists,  is  the  "high-rise"  at  Morgantown.  The  11-story 
facility  is  designed  as  an  institute  for  "behavior  modification,"  the  latest 
fad  in  the  field  of  corrections,  which  refuses  to  acknowledge  the  failures 
of  a  society  that  needs  fundamental  change,  opting  instead  to  tamper 
with  the  individual  subjects'  heads.  Camouflaged  by  garlands  of  psycho- 
logical theories,  behavior  modification  is  underneath  all  the  sweet 
rationales,  still  another  way  of  forcing  a  prisoner  to  accept  responsibility 
for  his  own  poverty,  deprivation,  victimization.  At  Morgantown,  be- 
havior modification  is  literally  built  into  the  structure  of  the  institution. 
Young  inmates  first  brought  here  are  immediately  placed  on  the  top  floor 
in  a  bare  room  for  a  period  of  solitary  confinement.  Based  on  how  he 
responds  to  his  keepers,  after  a  few  weeks  he  is  or  isn't  brought  to  the  next 
floor  down,  where  he  is  given  a  blanket.  Similarly,  depending  on  his 
behavior  he  works  his  way  down  to  the  other  floors  where  he  might 
acquire  a  cellmate,  eventually  access  to  a  radio  or  television,  until  he 
finally  works  or  "behaves"  his  way  down  to  the  ground  floor  and  release 
from  prison.  The  same  program,  where  prisoners  are  put  into  solitary 
confinement  upon  entering  the  institute  and  are  rewarded  for  docility 
with  better  conditions,  was  applied  for  a  while  at  Springfield,  Missouri, 
federal  penitentiary,  under  the  name  Project  START.  If  insufficient 
"progress"  was  shown  by  the  prisoner  after  18  months,  he  was  then  sent  to 
a  medical  facility  for  treatment  as  a  "chronic  psychotic."  That  program 
was  discontinued  in  1974  after  inmate  protests,  lawsuits,  hunger  strikes 
and  congressional  hearings.  But  local  programs,  such  as  those  in  North 
Carolina,  continue. 


U.s  .  Treasury  agent  Stanley  Noel  was  present  and  accounted  for  at  the 
Pender  County  courthouse  in  Burgaw  that  September  11, 1972,  when  the 
second  Wilmington  10  trial  was  to  begin.  A  man  of  cold  steel-grey  eyes 


178 


Five 


which  reinforce  the  appearance  of  one  who  might  have  viewed  Buchen- 
wald  as  merely  an  unpleasantness,  Noel  came  to  Burgaw  for  more  than 
vicarious  pleasures.  He  had  pursued  Ben  Chavis  from  the  time  the  young 
man  became  active  in  the  student  antiwar  movement  in  UNCC,  and  had 
conducted  no-knock  raids  of  Ben's  student  apartment.  Now,  five  years 
later,  in  a  North  Carolina  state  case,  the  federal  G-man  had  prepared  the 
prosecution's  evidence  just  as  he'd  done  in  the  state's  case  against  the 
Charlotte  Three.  On  behalf  of  his  superiors  he  had  finally  managed  to  put 
away  Jim  Grant  for  35  years  in  federal  and  state  prisons;  now  after  a  half- 
dozen  failures,  he  was  going  to  get  Ben  Chavis  for  34  years.  Relishing  his 
accomplishment,  he  would  sit  in  court  every  day  for  seven  weeks,  now  a 
participant,  now  a  spectator,  in  the  second  longest  trial  in  the  history  of 
North  Carolina. 

Also  to  be  victimized  as  co-defendants  of  the  Rev.  Chavis  were 
members  of  his  church,  high-school  student  leaders  and  community 
activists.  Such  are  the  requirements  of  "conspiracy"  prosecutions  and 
investigatory  whimsy,  that  more  than  one  person  is  necessary  to  "con- 
spire," the  more  the  better  as  it  happens.  Making  up  the  Wilmington  10  in 
addition  to  Ben  were  Reginald  Epps,  the  oldest  of  nine  children,  an  usher 
and  choir  member  at  Wilmington's  Price  A.M.E.  Zion  Church,  and 
member  of  the  Student  Human  Relations  Committee;  Jerry  Jacobs,  who 
grew  up  in  the  Union  Baptist  Church  and  became  an  outstanding  tennis 
player  and  instructor;  James  McKoy,  a  graduate  of  Hoggard  High 
School,  a  musician  and  little  league  baseball  coach;  Wayne  Moore,  a 
graduate  of  the  New  Hanover  County  School  and  member  of  the  Temple 
of  the  Black  Messiah,  whose  mother  is  a  community  leader  associated 
with  Wilmington's  NAACP,  Ebenezer  Baptist  Church  and  Operation 
Headstart;  Marvin  Patrick,  a  member  of  the  Temple  of  the  Black 
Messiah  and  a  Vietnam  veteran  at  the  age  of  19;  Ann  Sheppard,  the  only 
white  and  only  woman  defendant,  a  friend  of  Rev.  Eugene  and  Donna 
Templeton  of  the  Gregory  Congregational  Church,  a  member  of  the 
Wilmington  Good  Neighbor  Council,  and  mother  of  three;  Connie 
Tindall,  formerly  part  of  the  New  Hanover  County  School  Glee  Club,  an 
outstanding  football  player  and  member  of  the  Ebenezer  Baptist  Church; 
Willie  Earl  Vereen,  member  of  the  Hoggard  High  School  band  and 
parishioner  at  the  Temple  of  the  Black  Messiah;  and  William  Wright,  II, 
better  known  as  "Joe"  at  the  New  Hanover  County  School  he  attended 
and  the  St.  Thomas  Catholic  Church  to  which  he  belonged.  All  but  Ann 
Sheppard  and  Connie  Tindall  were  teenagers  at  the  time  of  arrest;  Ann 
was  34,  Connie,  21. 

Solicitor  Jay  Stroud's  stomach  ache  was  a  thing  of  the  past  as  the 

179 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

second  trial  opened.  On  hand  to  help  out  in  addition  to  Treasury  agent 
Noel,  was  Dale  Johnson,  a  special  prosecutor  sent  to  Burgaw  from 
Raleigh  by  his  boss,  Attorney  General  Robert  Morgan.  Morgan's  record 
of  prosecuting  Rev.  Chavis  must  have  made  him  feel  somewhat  like  the 
frustrated  Hamilton  Burger,  who  had  to  duel  Perry  Mason  in  the 
courtroom  in  each  of  Earl  Stanley  Gardner's  creations.  This  time 
Morgan  was  determined  to  succeed.  In  addition  to  sending  prosecutor 
Johnson  from  his  own  office,  the  attorney  general  dispatched  Judge 
Robert  Martin  to  Burgaw.  Judge  Martin,  who  had  presided  over  theTeel 
trial  in  which  the  Klansmen  who  killed  Henry  Lee  Marrow  in  Oxford 
went  free,  had  also  kept  Walter  David  Washington  on  the  streets  after  the 
latter's  testimony  against  the  Charlotte  Three.  It  was  Judge  Martin  who 
ruled  over  Washington's  probation  hearing  when  he  was  under  investiga- 
tion for  murder  and  under  indictment  for  armed  robbery.  Martin  ruled 
that  Washington's  probation  restrictions  were  no  longer  warranted,  such 
had  been  the  pace  and  thoroughness  of  his  reformation.  No  such  charity 
would  be  forthcoming  from  Judge  Martin  in  the  Wilmington  10  trial 
however. 

Martin,  who  with  Attorney  General  Morgan,  had  campaigned  for  the 
segregationist  I.  Beverly  Lake  for  governor  a  decade  earlier,  did  not 
figure  to  be  disinterested  and  impartial  in  a  case  that  centered  around  the 
struggle  to  desegregate  the  Wilmington  school  system.  (Judge  Martin 
told  the  author  two  years  after  the  Wilmington  10  trial  that  he  "harbored 
no  prejudice"  against  Black  people.  "I  was  raised  in  a  mainly  Black 
county.  I  ate  with  them  and  played  with  them.  We  had  an  instinctive  love 
for  the  Negro  race.  Why,  my  secretary  is  Black.  That  should  show  you 
how  I  feel  about  them.")  For  his  part,  Morgan  played  the  prudent  cruise 
captain,  staying  in  the  background  except  for  at  least  one  moment  in  the 
heat  of  the  trial,  when  he  came  to  Burgaw  to  lunch  and  confer  with  Judge 
Martin,  an  indiscretion  both  dismissed  as  a  "social"  meeting  having 
nothing  to  do  with  the  case  at  hand.  Those  who  were  not  apt  to  take 
elected  officials  at  their  word,  pointed  out  that  tiny  Burgaw  is  not  so 
noted  for  its  cuisine  that  the  attorney  general  would  drive  125  miles  from 
Raleigh  for  a  bite  to  eat. 

The  first  week  of  the  trial  was  consumed  by  jury  selection.  Over  100 
prospective  jurors  were  bused  80  miles  every  morning  into  Burgaw. 
Defense  attorney  James  Ferguson  asked  the  court  to  sequester  the 
prospective  jurors  during  the  selection  questioning  so  that  they  would 
not  be  influenced  by  one  another's  answers,  especially  in  light  of  pre-trial 
publicity.  The  motion  was  denied  by  Judge  Martin. 

In  that  first  week,  the  prosecution  used  42  preemptory  challenges  to 

180 


Five 

dismiss  potential  Black  jurors  without  cause.  The  defense  used  up  its 
preemptory  challenges  against  jurors  who  were  admitted  Klan  members 
or  supporters,  those  who  said  they  thought  the  defendants  were  guilty, 
and  those  who  said  they  would  not  be  on  trial  if  they  hadn't  done  at  least 
some  wrong.  Eventually,  though,  the  defense  ran  out  of  preemptory 
challenges  and  had  to  show  cause.  In  this  effort  they  were  blocked  by 
Judge  Martin.  The  nature  of  the  voir  dire  {jury  selection)  questioning  and 
the  trial  to  come  can  be  determined  by  the  following  excerpts  of 
testimony: 

q.  (Prosecution)  Let  me  ask  you  this.  Have  you  heard  or  read  anything  with 
regard  to  any  of  these  defendants  in  connection  with  these  particular  charges? 
a.  No,  not  these  particular  charges,  no. 

q.  And  as  a  result  of  anything  that  you  have  read  or  heard  have  you  formed 
any  impression  since  you  don't  know  anything  that  has  gone  on  and  you  only 
have  what  you  have  read  or  heard  to  rely  on,  have  you  formed  any  impression 
about  any  particular  or  any  of  these  defendants? 

a.  I  have  formed  an  opinion  as  to  the  character  of  one  of  the  defendants. 

q.  You  have? 

a.  Yes,  sir.  That  is,  as  a  result  of  what  I  have  read.  It  is  not  the  result  of  any 
other  source  of  information.  Just  what  1  have  read. 

q.  As  a  result  of  that  impression  you  have  of  that  particular  defendant,  do 
you  think  it  would  have  any  bearing  at  all  in  what  your  verdict  might  be  in  this 
case  on  the  basis  of  the  evidence  that  will  be  presented  here? 

a.  If  I  had  a  difficult  time  in  reaching  a  verdict  it  just  might  possibly  help  me 
in  reaching  a  verdict,  maybe,  just  might  possibly.  I  am  saying  that  the 
impression  I  have  is  an  unfavorable  one  toward  the  defendant.  I  don't  know 
the  defendant  personally.  I  have  seen  his  picture. 

Q.  You  have  never  seen  him  personally? 

a.  No. 

MR.  Ferguson:  Objection.  We  renew  our  motion  to  sequester  the  jurors  on 
the  voir  dire  examination. 

the  court:  Overruled.  Denied. 

Or,  another  example: 

q.  Do  you  realize  that  anyone  who  will  serve  on  the  jury  in  this  case  will  be 
required  by  law  to  render  their  verdict  only  on  the  basis  of  the  evidence  that  is 
presented  here  under  oath  here  in  this  courtroom.  Do  you  understand  that? 

a.  Yes. 

Q.  Would  you  be  able  to  do  that? 

A.  Well,  I  think  maybe  I  could.  I  don't  know.  I  have  formed  opinions  and 
heard  opinions  formed  about  it.  I  don't  know  whether  it  would  have  any  effect 
on  me  or  not. 


181 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

q.  Opinions  about  what,  sir? 

a.  About  this  case. 

Q.  What  about  this  case? 

mr  Ferguson:  Objection. 

the  court:  Overruled. 

a.  The  case  that  is  being  tried  here. 

q.  You  have  an  opinion  as  to  the  case  that  is  being  tried  here? 
a.  Yes. 

mr.  Ferguson:  Objection;  we  renew  our  motion  to  sequester  the  remaining 
panel. 

the  court:  Overruled. 

Scores  of  similar  exceptions  were  made  by  the  defense,  which  was 
holding  to  the  American  Bar  Association  fair  trial  standards  that  state, 
"Wherever  there  is  believed  to  be  a  significant  possibility  that  individual 
talesmens  will  be  ineligible  to  serve  because  of  exposure  to  potentially 
prejudicial  material,  the  examination  of  each  juror  with  respect  to  his 
exposure  shall  take  place  outside  the  presence  of  other  chosen  and 
prospective  jurors." 

Throughout  the  questioning  Judge  Martin  catered  to  the  prosecution's 
bent  for  constant  references  to  the  race  of  persons,  e.g.  "Do  any  of  you 
know  Mr.  or  Mrs.  James  Jackson,  a  Black  couple  who  lived  in  that  house 
owned  by  Mrs.  Fennell?"  or  "Do  any  of  you  know  Mrs.  McKeithan,  a 
Black  woman  of  Wilmington  who  lived  next  door  to  Mike's  grocery 
store?"  But  the  judge  was  not  so  liberal  in  allowing  defense  questioning  as 
to  the  jurors'  possible  racism.  On  at  least  105  occasions,  the  judge 
sustained  prosecution  objections  to  such  questioning  by  attorney  Fergu- 
son. The  transcript  provides  the  following  examples  among  many: 

Q.  Now,  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  thejury,  it  so  happens  in  this  case  that  nine 
of  the  defendants  on  trial  are  Black  persons.  The  store  that  they  are  charged 
with  burning  is  owned  by  Mike  Poulos,  a  white  person  in  Wilmington.  Let  me 
ask  first  if  any  of  you  presently  have  any  feelings  of  racial  prejudice  against 
Black  people.  That  is,  would  any  of  you  more  readily  convict  these  persons 
because  they  are  Black  than  you  would  if  they  were  white?  Do  any  of  you  feel 
more  strongly  about  this  case  because  the  person  whose  store  was  allegedly 
burned  was  white?  All  of  you  feel  that  you  could  put  that  out  of  your  minds 
and  not  let  it  influence  your  verdicts  one  way  or  the  other  in  the  trial  of  this 
case?  One  of  the  defendants  in  this  action,  Mrs.  Sheppard,  is  white,  a  young 
white  lady.  Does  the  fact  that  nine  Black  men  are  charged  along  with  one 
white  woman  give  any  of  you  any  feelings  about  any  of  the  defendants  in  this 
case  which  might  be  adverse  to  them  or  against  them?  Do  any  of  you  harbor 
any  feelings  of  racial  prejudice  that  you  are  aware  of  whatsoever?  Have  any  of 

182 


Five 


you  ever  belonged  to  any  clubs  or  organizations  which  has  as  one  of  its  tenets 
white  supremacy? 

solicitor  stroud:  Objection 

the  court:  Objection  sustained. 

Or,  the  following: 

Q.  Going  back  to  Mr.  Brown  for  a  moment.  I  am  sorry.  What  clubs  or 
organizations  in  the  community  are  you  a  member  of,  Mr.  Brown? 

A.  I  belong  to  the  Burgaw  Lions  Club,  Pender  County  Rescue  Squad, 
American  Legion,  member  of  the  Pender  County  Board  of  Education.  I 
belong  to  several  school  groups.  I  belong  to  the  Pender  County  Industrial 
Development  Corporation.  I  have  been  a  member  of  the  Buckner  Country 
Club,  member  of  the  Baptist  Church.  I  am  a  Mason.  That  is  all  1  can  think  of 
right  now. 

q.  Have  you  ever  belonged  to  any  club  or  organization  that  excluded  Black 
people  among  its  membership? 
solicitor  stroud:  Objection. 
the  court:  Sustained. 

Or,  again: 

Q.  Have  any  of  you  ever  been  victims  of  a  damage  to  property?  Has  anyone 
ever  damaged  your  property  that  you  know  of?  Any  of  your  property  burned 
by  anyone?  It  happens  in  this  case,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  and  again  1  am  just 
asking  for  your  honest  answers,  that  the  nine  defendants  1  represent  are  young 
Black  men.  The  store  that  is  alleged  to  have  been  burned  was  owned  by  a  white 
man,  Mike  Poulos,  in  Wilmington.  Does  the  race  of  the  parties  involved 
bother  anyone?  Does  that  give  any  of  you  any  problems? 

solicitor  stroud:  Objection. 

court:  Overruled. 

Q.  And  is  anyone  bothered  by  that  fact?  I  am  really  asking  you  if  anyone 
feels  more  sympathetic  to  one  side  in  the  case  or  the  other  because  of  that  fact? 
Do  all  of  you  believe  in  racial  equality? 

solicitor  stroud:  Objection. 

court:  Sustained. 

q.  Is  there  anyone  on  the  jury  who  doesn't  believe  in  racial  equality? 
mr.  johnson:  Objection. 
court:  Sustained. 

Q.  Would  any  of  you  more  readily  convict  a  person  charged  with  a  crime 
because  he  is  Black  than  you  would  if  he  was  some  other  color? 
solicitor  stroud:  Objection. 
court:  Sustained. 


183 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

The  jury  was  finally  seated  after  two  weeks  of  selections,  with  ten  whites 
and  two  Blacks,  exactly  the  reverse  of  the  ratio  in  the  first  trial. 

The  trial  itself  proved  as  frustrating  for  the  defense  attorneys  as  the 
voir  dire.  The  state  entered  into  evidence  88  photographs  of  the  Gregory 
Congregational  Church  taken  in  1972,  a  year  after  the  siege  of  the  church. 
That  is,  over  defense  objections,  the  prosecution  presented  "evidence" 
not  of  a  1971  "crime"  but  of  a  1972  scene.  Most  of  the  state's  case  was 
about  on  the  same  level.  During  the  armed  siege  of  the  church  the 
previous  year,  emergency  medical  supplies  were  brought  to  Rev.  Tem- 
pleton's  house  next  to  the  church  for  first-aid  purposes.  The  medical 
supplies  were  later  taken  by  the  National  Guard  and  were  now  presented 
in  court  as  evidence  that  Ben  and  the  students  had  been  planning  an 
armed  rebellion  all  along  and  had  set  up  a  revolutionary  hospital.  The 
prosecutors  passed  the  band-aids  to  the  jury  so  that  they  could  see  them, 
then  passed  the  scissors  around,  passed  the  gauze,  the  unguentine,  the 
iodine.  It  took  a  whole  morning  of  the  trial  for  the  jury  to  inspect  these 
"revolutionary"  medical  supplies. 

The  only  photos  of  Rev.  Chavis  the  prosecution  had  were  taken  during 
a  nonviolent  march  to  the  Wilmington  City  Hall  asking  for  police 
protection  for  the  Black  community  and  for  a  city-wide  curfew,  and 
those  taken  during  the  funeral  of  Steve  Mitchell  a  week  after  the  siege  of 
the  church  was  lifted.  The  city  had  enjoined  the  mourners  from  having 
the  funeral  at  Gregory,  so  they  walked  in  formation  across  town  to 
another  church.  Photos  were  taken  of  everybody  in  the  funeral  proces- 
sion. These  pictures  were  introduced  in  the  trial  and  portrayed  to  the  jury 
as  a  mob  scene.  Jay  Stroud,  aggressive  in  court  but  otherwise  a  rather 
dim  bulb,  told  the  jury,  look,  this  is  concrete  proof,  pictures  don't  lie, 
here's  Chavis  leading  a  mob.  The  photos  showed  the  mourners,  marching 
in  twos,  nonviolently.  When  the  defense  subpoenaed  the  photographer, 
it  was  discovered  that  he  had  been  sent  to  Wilmington  by  the  FBI, 
Defense  Intelligence  Agency  and  other  federal  snoop  bureaus. 

But  the  defendants  suffered  a  serious  blow  early  in  the  trial.  The  key 
witnesses  were  to  be  Rev.  and  Mrs.  Templeton,  who  were  flying  back  to 
North  Carolina  to  testify.  Their  testimony  would  include  vouching  for 
the  presence  of  Rev.  Chavis  and  other  defendants  in  their  livingroom  at 
the  time  of  the  fire  at  Mike's  Grocery.  Solicitor  Stroud  found  out  they 
were  on  their  way  and  he  sent  some  policemen  to  the  Wilmington  airport 
to  arrest  the  Templetons  on  sight.  The  plane  was  to  touch  down  in 
Fayetteville  en  route,  and  some  friends  of  the  defense  took  them  off  the 
plane  and  drove  them  to  Raleigh  to  await  discussions  to  decide  how  next 
to  move.  But  the  Templetons,  fearful  now  of  the  consequences  of 

184 


Five 

testifying,  left  North  Carolina  again,  taking  with  them  the  best  hope  of 
the  Wilmington  10  for  a  court  acquittal. 

As  in  the  Chavis-Grant  federal  trial  and  the  Charlotte  Three  case,  what 
the  prosecution  lacked  in  evidence  it  made  up  for  with  testimony  from 
convicted  criminals  on  the  make  for  reduced  sentences.  Of  41  witnesses 
for  the  prosecution — most  were  police,  firemen  or  other  city  employees 
who  took  the  stand  to  say,  yup,  I  was  near  the  church  that  night,  and  I  can 
tell  you  there  were  gunfire  and  destruction  of  property,  but  I  can't 
identify  the  defendants  and  tell  you  if  they  did  anything  wrong — only  one 
witness  placed  the  defendants  on  the  scene  and  implicated  them  in  the 
damage  that  resulted.  He  was  18-year-old  Allen  Hall,  who  had  been  in 
and  out  of  various  mental  institutions  and  was  now  in  prison  on  a  12- 
year-sentence  on  charges  of  rioting  during  the  siege  of  the  Gregory 
Congregational  Church.  The  other  key  prosecution  witness  was  Jerome 
Mitchell,  also  18,  also  in  prison,  for  40  years  on  unrelated  robbery  and 
murder  charges. 

When  Hall  was  originally  arrested,  he  signed  a  statement  admitting 
that  he  had  burned  down  Mike's  Grocery,  that  he  had  shot  at  policemen, 
that  he  had  shot  Harvey  Cumber,  the  man  who  died  of  gunshot  wounds 
while  he  was  firing  into  the  church,  and  that  he  had  committed  these 
crimes  alone.  The  police  then  sent  him  to  a  mental  hospital  until  he 
agreed  to  testify  against  the  Wilmington  10  in  return  for  immunity  from 
prosecution  on  the  assault,  arson  and  conspiracy  to  murder  charges.  It 
was  Hall's  agreement  to  the  deal  that  brought  the  initial  indictment. 

By  the  time  of  trial,  Hall  had  his  tale  down  as  pat  as  can  be  expected 
from  a  deranged  teenager.  The  essence  of  his  new  story  was  that  Ben 
Chavis  came  to  Wilmington  to  organize  a  clandestine  revolutionary 
rebellion,  pitting  Black  people  against  white  people;  that  Ben  had 
virtually  hypnotized  Hall  into  doing  the  things  he  had  admitted  to;  that 
in  the  church,  Ben  carried  two  machine  guns,  and  that  Hall  and  Marvin 
Patrick  each  had  another;  that  they  were  under  instructions  to  shoot  at 
all  white  people,  even  the  whites  inside  the  church;  that  he  burned  down 
Mike's  Grocery  and  killed  Harvey  Cumber  on  Ben's  orders.  Mitchell, 
who  was  not  in  the  vicinity  of  the  church  during  the  entire  week  of  the 
events  in  question,  but  who  was  allowed  into  the  courtroom  to  listen  to 
Hall's  testimony,  simply  repeated  Hall's  story,  as  if  verification  from  a 
convicted  murderer  and  robber  lent  ample  weight  to  secure  a  conviction. 
(Solicitor  Jay  Stroud  was  pleased  enough  with  Mitchell  as  a  snitch  to  use 
him  in  a  trial  of  two  other  young  Black  men,  Isaac  Sherill  Munk  and 
Christopher  Spicer,  who  were  sentenced  to  death  in  Central  Prison's  gas 
chamber  for  the  murder  of  a  white  man,  on  the  basis  of  Mitchell's 


185 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

testimony  on  August  24,  1973.)  Hall,  a  lifelong  resident  of  Wilmington, 
and  one  who  claimed  to  be  in  the  church  for  the  four  crucial  days  in 
February,  could  identify  only  the  10  defendants  as  having  been  in  the 
church  with  him,  although  he  admitted  there  were  some  200  other 
youngsters  there  as  well.  One  of  the  defendants  he  named,  Ann  Shep- 
pard,  produced  in  court  a  letter  Hall  had  sent  her  from  prison,  after  he 
had  agreed  to  testify  for  the  prosecution.  The  letter  was  a  threat  to  kill  her 
if  she  didn't  also  testify  for  the  state. 

Under  Ferguson's  cross-examination,  Hall's  barking  at  the  moon 
became  apparent  to  onlookers.  At  times  during  Hall's  three-day  descrip- 
tion of  events  that  had  taken  place  19  months  earlier,  he  told  exactly  how 
many  bullets  had  been  fired  by  various  defendants  during  gunbattles 
with  police,  the  number  of  firebombs  thrown  at  buildings  and  the 
calibers  of  a  dozen  weapons.  He  couldn't  say  "right  offhand"  what 
detectives  had  said  to  him  the  day  he  admitted  having  committed  the 
crimes,  but  he  could  "right  offhand"  quote  precisely  Ben  Chavis'  words 
of  a  year  and  a  half  before. 

Ferguson  showed  Hall  a  transcript  of  a  preliminary  hearing  in  which 
the  young  convict  testified  he  had  never  met  Ben  before  February  5, 1971, 
and  a  later  statement  in  which  he  said  he  attended  several  meetings  with 
Ben  earlier  that  year.  Hall  also  testified  on  cross-examination  that  he  had 
met  with  detectives  and  prosecuting  attorneys  several  times  before  the 
trial  and  that  he  had  visited  the  scene  of  the  fires  and  shootings  with 
them,  but  he  could  not  recall  the  dates  of  these  conversations  and  visits. 

Ferguson  showed  Hall  a  statement  he  had  signed  months  before  the 
trial  in  which  Hall  claimed  that  on  the  night  that  Mike's  Grocery  burned 
down,  he  had  bought  a  bottle  of  liquor  and  gone  to  an  uncle's  house 
where  he  drank  and  ate  fried  chicken.  "You  went  out  to  the  VFW  and  got 
drunk  and  don't  know  what  you  did  on  Friday  night,  isn't  that  right?" 
asked  Ferguson.  "No,  sir,"  replied  Hall. 

The  young  mental  patient  became  agitated  as  contradiction  after 
contradiction  in  his  testimony  were  brought  out.  He  threatened  to 
become  unhinged,  as  he  had  during  the  preliminary  hearings  earlier  that 
year  when  he  jumped  from  the  stand  and  swung  at  Rev.  Chavis.  Now,  his 
anger  was  directed  at  attorney  Ferguson.  He  bolted  out  of  the  witness 
chair  and  lunged  at  Ferguson.  It  took  six  deputies  to  subdue  and  remove 
the  witness  from  the  courtroom,  and  one  juror  was  knocked  down  by 
Hall  on  his  way  out.  When  the  court  reconvened,  one  juror  asked  to  be 
excused,  citing  heart  problems,  but  Judge  Martin  chose  to  continue  the 
trial,  and  warned  Ferguson  that  he  would  be  cited  for  contempt  of  court 
if  he  again  "provoked"  Hall. 

186 


Five 

The  defense  moved  for  a  mental  examination  of  Hall,  and  moved  for  a 
mistrial  because  of  the  witness's  actions.  At  this  point,  the  trial  transcript 
reads: 

court:  The  court  finds  and  concludes  that  the  demeanor  of  the  witness  and 
the  incident  was  precipitated  in  some  degree  by  his  long  cross-examination, 
the  rapidity  of  the  questions,  the  tone  of  the  examiner  and  that  the  motion  for 
a  mental  examination  of  the  witness  is  not  required  and  the  motion  is  denied. 

MR.  Ferguson:  May  we  let  the  record  show  that  we  except  to  each  and  every 
finding  of  fact  by  the  Court  and  to  the  conclusion  of  law. 

court:  And  also  that  the  motion  to  strike  the  evidence  of  the  witness  is 
denied. 

mr.  ferguson:  I  would  like  if  1  may,  to  state  that  we  would  like  to  call  to  the 
Court's  attention  that  shortly  after  the  cross-examination  of  the  witness  had 
begun  and  during  recess  of  the  Court  we  called  to  the  Court's  attention  the  fact 
that  the  witness  was  mouthing  obscenities  to  me  from  the  witness  stand. 

court:  And  also  I  believe  that  I  made  the  remark,  I  asked  you  was  it 
audible  and  you  said  there  was  no  audible  sound. 

mr.  ferguson:  That  is  correct. 

court:  The  motion  for  mistrial  is  denied. 

Among  the  more  questionable  of  the  prosecution's  acts  during  the  trial 
was  its  suppression  of  the  right  of  discovery  for  the  defense.  Allen  Hall 
had  given  a  typewritten  statement  of  his  testimony  to  the  prosecutors  at 
the  outset  of  the  trial.  As  the  prosecution  is  required  to  do,  it  showed  this 
initial  statement  to  the  defense.  However,  in  subsequent  interviews 
between  the  prosecutors  and  Hall,  the  original  statement  was  amended 
with  notes  by  the  prosecutor.  The  amended  statement  was  denied  to  the 
defense.  When  Ferguson  appealed  to  Judge  Martin,  the  jurist  read  the 
notes  himself  but  denied  the  defense  the  right  to  read  them. 

All  of  the  contradictions  in  Hall's  testimony  were  explained  by  Hall 
and  the  prosecution  as  having  been  "corrected"  or  "reconciled"  in  Hall's 
final  statement,  which  the  defense  was  not  denied  the  right  to  read.  Hall 
said  that  when  he  realized  he  had  lied  in  earlier  statements,  he  summoned 
Jay  Stroud  to  the  prison  in  which  he  was  being  held  and  dictated  changes 
which  Stroud  noted  in  the  margins  of  the  original  statement.  Judge 
Martin  ruled  that  the  defense  could  not  see  Hall's  corrected  statements 
because  they  were,  as  the  Raleigh  News  and  Observer  noted,  "his  own 
personal  notes  and  were  not  meant  for  public  examination."  During 
Jerome  Mitchell's  turn  in  the  witness  chair  the  next  day,  to  verify  Hall's 
story,  he  also  testified  that  signed  statements  he  had  given  to  police 
officers  were  false  and  "additions  and  corrections"  had  been  made  some 
time  after  the  statements  were  signed. 


187 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

In  Brady  v.  Maryland,  the  key  U.S.  Supreme  Court  decision  on 
suppression  of  evidence,  the  Court  ruled:  "We  now  hold  that  the 
suppression  by  the  prosecution  of  evidence  favorable  to  an  accused  upon 
request  violates  the  due  process  where  the  evidence  is  material  either  to 
guilt  or  to  punishment,  irrespective  of  the  good  faith  or  bad  faith  of  the 
prosecution."  Now,  in  a  case  where  the  chief  question  was  the  credibility 
of  the  only  witness  the  prosecution  had  who  might  tie  the  accused  to  the 
alleged  violations,  that  witness's  evidence  was  being  suppressed  by  both 
the  prosecution  and  the  court.  Since  the  supposed  amended  statement 
was  the  last  recorded  statement  made  by  Hall,  the  jury  was  given  the 
impression  that  regardless  of  any  prior  falsehoods  or  inconsistencies, 
Hall  had  made  a  final  statement  which  was  fully  consistent  with  his 
testimony.  And  the  defenre  was  being  told  that  it  would  not  be  allowed  to 
show  the  jury  that  this  "statement"  in  fact  never  did  exist,  or  even  that  it 
was  inconsistent  with  Hall's  testimony.  Judge  Martin  could  not  have 
more  effectively  rendered  the  defense  powerless  had  he  applied  gags  and 
shackles  to  the  attorneys.  The  maneuver  was  so  cute,  as  Dorothy  Parker 
once  wrote,  it  was  enough  to  make  one  "fwow  up." 

Attorney  Ferguson  argued  that  the  state  was  "emptying  out  the  jails, 
the  mental  institutions  and  the  training  schools"  to  produce  fabricated 
evidence  to  punish  Rev.  Chavis  for  his  political  leadership  of  the  Black 
communities  of  the  state  He  pointed  out  to  the  court  that  the  state  had 
based  its  case  on  a  display  of  guns,  some  photographs  taken  months  after 
the  incidents  in  question,  and  the  testimony  of  two  convicted  felons,  Hall 
and  Mitchell,  who  got  th^ir  stories  together  when  prosecutors  arranged 
for  them  to  meet  at  Cherry  State  Hospital  in  Goldsboro,  where  they  were 
confined  to  undergo  mental  examinations.  Ferguson's  argument  was  to 
no  avail.  Toward  the  trial's  end,  the  prosecution  produced  still  another 
witness,  a  13-year-old  named  Er»r  Junious,  Jr.,  who  had  been  imprisoned 
in  a  state  training  school  aftei  admitting  to  robbing  a  man  selling 
newspapers.  The  teenage  robber  was  called  to  support  the  contradictory 
testimony  of  Hall  and  Mitchell,  an  impossible  task  to  start  with  and  a 
miraclejobfora  13-year-old.  Eric  Junious,  Jr.,  proved  not  to  be  a  miracle 
worker 

Jtill,  with  a  jury  to  the  prosecution's  liking,  a  favorable  setting  like 
rural  Pender  County  in  which  the  Klan  and  ROWP  ran  at  will,  a  special 
prosecutor  and  special  judge  handpicked  by  the  state's  attorney  general, 
Jay  Stroud  had  easy  pickings  in  presenting  his  closing  arguments. 
Summing  up  the  case  against  the  young  minister,  eight  local  high-school 
students,  and  a  white  community  worker  and  mother  of  three,  the 
solicitor  said  that  the  defendants  were  "dangerous  animals  who  should 

188 


Five 


be  put  away  for  the  rest  of  their  lives."  The  state  reserved  special  venom 
for  Rev.  Chavis,  comparing  him  to  Adolph  Hitler.  Both  "filled  their 
followers  with  hate  ...  to  make  them  do  as  they  were  told,"  Stroud  told 
the  jury. 

After  seven  weeks  of  trial,  the  jury  returned  in  less  than  an  hour  with  its 
verdict.  The  Charlotte  Observer  reported  on  October  18  of  that  year, 
"The  courtroom's  tense  calm  was  broken  by  the  loud  moan  of  a  young 
Black  woman  who  slumped  forward  in  tears  as  the  word  'guilty*  was 
twice  recited  after  the  name  of  Willie  Earl  Vereen,  a  Wilmington  10th 
grader  who  has  missed  most  of  his  classes  and  practice  with  the  Hoggard 
High  School  marching  band  because  he's  been  on  trial  since  September 
11."  All  10  defendants  were  pronounced  guilty  as  charged.  Judge  Martin 
announced  that  he  would  delay  sentencing  overnight  and  the 
Wilmington  10  were  led  from  the  courtroom. 

The  defendants  were  placed  in  chains  and  put  on  the  prison  bus  that 
had  been  backed  up  to  the  courthouse  door.  Several  dozen  supporters  of 
the  accused  gathered  behind  a  line  of  patrolmen,  to  sing  "We  Shall 
Overcome"  and  to  recite  the  23rd  Psalm.  SB1  agents  on  the  scene  reacted 
here  were  10  defendants,  8  of  them  teenagers,  who  had  never  been  The  10 
were  turned  over  to  Department  of  Corrections  officers,  who  then  pulled 
out  their  pistols  and  told  those  praying  and  singing  to  get  back.  Ten 
highway  patrol  cars  and  half  as  many  SBI  and  local  police  cars  escorted 
the  Wilmington  10  to  the  jail  in  Jacksonville,  home  of  ROWP  chief  Leroy 
Gibson,  thirty-five  miles  and  a  county  away. 

The  next  morning,  they  were  awakened  early,  placed  back  in  chains, 
put  back  on  the  bus,  surrounded  again  by  fifteen  SBI  and  highway  patrol 
cars  and  brought  back  to  Burgaw  for  sentencing.  Judge  Martin  asked  for 
motions  on  sentencing  and  the  defense  requested  lenience,  arguing  that 
here  were  10  defendants,  8  of  them  teenagers,  who  had  never  been 
convicted  of  any  crime.  Mrs.  Sheppard,  they  pointed  out,  suffered  from 
hypertension  and  a  jail  experience  could  only  be  harmful.  Ben  requested 
that  Ferguson  not  ask  for  lenience  on  his  behalf  because  "I  didn't  want 
mercy  from  the  state  because  I  wasn't  guilty."  The  prosecutors  argued 
that  the  Wilmington  10  had  to  be  put  away  for  life,  double  the  maximum, 
not  to  see  the  light  of  day  again,  to  set  an  example,  to  teach  society.  One 
by  one  Judge  Martin  pronounced  sentence:  first,  Mrs.  Sheppard,  10 
years;  then  the  8  teenagers  20-25  years;  finally,  Rev.  Ben  Chavis,  29-34 
years,  the  longest  sentence  for  arson  in  North  Carolina  history.  All 
combined,  the  Wilmington  10  faced  282  years  in  prison. 

Again  they  were  placed  in  shackles  and  leg  irons  and  led  out  of  the 
courthouse  to  the  bus.  This  time  they  were  going  to  Raleigh,  the  men  to 

189 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

Central  Prison  where  Ben  Chavis  and  Connie  Tindall  would  stay,  while 
the  others  were  sent  to  Odom  Prison  Farm;  Ann  Sheppard  would  again 
be  incarcerated  in  Women's  Prison  in  Raleigh.  As  they  marched  toward 
the  bus,  they  could  see  sharpshooters  on  the  roof  of  the  courthouse. 
Later,  leaving  town,  they  saw  through  the  bars  of  bus  windows  other 
police  marksmen  on  the  roofs  of  the  armed  encampment  that  was 
downtown  Burgaw. 

On  the  bus,  the  guards  displayed  their  new  weapons,  M16s  with 
infrared  scopes,  gifts  of  the  Law  Enforcement  Assistance  Administration 
in  Washington.  The  guards  told  their  young  prisoners  that  they  hadn't 
used  the  weapons  yet  and  were  just  waiting  for  the  opportunity  to  try 
them. 

All  125  miles  to  Raleigh,  Black  people  came  out  on  the  road  to  watch 
the  prison  bus  and  the  cortege  of  a  dozen  police  cars,  and  to  wave  good- 
bye to  the  Wilmington  10. 


Cj  overnment  repression  of  the  civil  rights  movement  was  patterned 
after  years  of  persecution  of  labor  organizers,  stretching  back  decades,  to 
much  before  the  Henderson  cotton  mill  strike  in  the  1950s.39 

Not  without  reason.  A  reading  of  U.S.  labor  history  shows  North 
Carolina  to  have  been  the  site  of  some  of  the  longest  and  bloodiest  strikes 
and  pitched  battles.  Tens  of  thousands  of  Tarheel  workers  have  been 
evicted  from  company  towns,  jailed,  brutalized  and  murdered  in  this 
century  for  attempting  to  organize  themselves. 

In  1914,  average  hourly  wages  for  Southern  textile  spinners  ranged 
from  8  to  9  cents  an  hour.  Hours  had  been  charitably  cut  from  72  to  63 
per  week,  including  for  women  and  children.40  The  world  war  provided  a 
boom  for  the  looms,  particularly  in  the  Carolina  Piedmont.  Gaston 
County  adopted  the  slogan,  "Organize  a  mill  a  week,"  and  had  built  105 
mills  by  1923.  In  1929,  it  was  the  leading  textile  county  in  the  South,  and 
third  in  the  nation,  causing  one  union  organizer  to  remark,  "North 
Carolina  is  the  key  to  the  South,  Gaston  County  is  the  key  to  North 
Carolina,  and  the  Loray  Mill  is  the  key  to  Gaston  County."41 

The  National  Industrial  Conference  Board  in  1920  computed  that  a 
minimum  standard  of  living  in  Charlotte  for  a  family  of  five  would 
require  $1,438  a  year.  But  the  average  Tarheel  textile  worker's  income 
was  $730  in  1919,  and  dropped  to  $624  in  1921.  Low  wages  became  the 
magnet  for  Northern  capital.  One  economist  likened  the  Southern  textile 
worker  to  the  slave  on  the  auction  block.  "Native  whites!"  he  mimicked. 


190 


Five 

"Anglo-Saxons  of  the  true  blood!  All  English-speaking!  Tractable, 
harmonious,  satisfied  with  little!  They  know  nothing  of  foreign-born 
radicalism!  Come  down  and  gobble  them  up!"42  White  mill  workers' 
children  were  wage-slave  counterparts  to  their  Black  chattel-slave  fore- 
bears. A  North  Carolina  mill  doctor  was  asked,  "How  long  do  you 
believe  it  is  safe  ...  to  employ  a  girl  12  years  of  age  in  a  cotton  mill?,,  He 
answered,  not  over  10  or  12  hours  a  day.43 

Union  organizing  drives  were  sporadic  and  only  intermittently  suc- 
cessful. In  1919,  the  United  Textile  Workers  shifted  their  main  attention 
to  North  Carolina  after  several  defeats  elsewhere.  In  that  year  of  postwar 
prosperity,  the  union  had  43  locals  in  the  state  and  claimed  40,000 
members  in  North  Carolina.  But  with  the  economic  crisis  of  1920-21,  the 
mills  started  to  shut  down.  Wages  were  cut  by  as  much  as  50  percent,  the 
workers  went  out  on  strike,  the  strike  waned  without  funding,  and  the 
workers  returned  to  the  mills  under  the  gaze  of  the  state  militia,  their 
wages  still  reduced  by  half,  their  union  crushed. 

If  Gaston  County  was  the  largest  textile  county  in  the  South,  the  Loray 
Mill — started  by  locals  at  the  turn  of  the  century  but  acquired  in  1923  by 
the  Manville-Jenckes  Corporation  of  Pawtucket,  R.I. — was  the  largest 
in  the  county.  The  Loray  Mill  was  in  constant  turmoil  as  management 
sought  a  return  to  halcyon  days  of  yore,  while  the  workers  became 
increasingly  unruly.  In  1927  the  mill  brought  in  a  new  superintendent, 
G.A.  Johnstone,  who  immediately  increased  work  loads,  sometimes 
doubling  them,  discharged  workers  on  a  whim,  reduced  the  workforce 
from  3,500  to  2,200  and  cut  wages  by  20  percent.  The  Loray  workers  took 
to  the  streets  the  next  year,  convincing  management  to  replace 
Johnstone. 

The  workers  were  hardly  steeled  in  long  years  of  class  struggle. 
Gastonia  lies  at  the  approach  to  the  Blue  Ridge  and,  like  most  of  the 
textile  and  furniture  industry  in  North  Carolina,  the  Loray  Mill  was 
established  with  an  eye  to  lure  mountain  folk  off  their  farms  with 
promises  of  good  cash  wages.  Come  they  did  into  these  mill  towns. 
Gastonia,  dominated  by  Manville-Jenckes'  Loray,  was  the  prototype 
mill  village.  The  company  owned  the  general  store,  the  churches,  the 
recreational  centers,  the  doctors,  the  teachers.  The  workers  could  not 
vote  in  local  elections  because  they  were  not  registered,  or  were  registered 
in  their  home  counties,  or  because  they  lived  within  the  perimeter  of 
unincorporated  municipalities  wholly  owned  by  the  mills.  Manville- 
Jenckes  could  cut  off  credit  at  the  company  store,  evict  the  worker  and 
family  from  the  company  house,  bar  children  from  the  company  school, 
stop  the  worker  from  entering  the  company  hospital,  or  even  expel  him 
from  the  company-owned  church. 


191 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

On  New  Years  Day  1929,  Fred  Beal,  an  organizer  for  the  newly  formed 
National  Textile  Workers  U  nion  (NTWU)  and  a  member  of  the  Commu- 
nist Party,  came  to  neighboring  Charlotte  where  he  set  up  shop.  With 
occasional  forays  into  Gastonia,  Beal  was  able  to  organize  a  NTWU 
nucleus  at  the  Loray  Mill.  The  company  reacted  predictably  and  swiftly, 
summoning  up  among  the  white  city  fathers  the  same  hatred,  as  WJ. 
Cash  pointed  out,  that  gave  rise  to  the  Ku  Klux  Klan.  Communist  union 
organizers  coming  South  brought  a  sense  of  deja  vu  to  a  state  that  still 
collectively  shuddered  at  the  historical  spectre  of  Northern  troops 
securing  Reconstruction. 

A  company  informer  exposed  the  union  core-group  in  the  mill  and  on 
March  25,  1929,  Loray  fired  five  union  members.  Five  days  later,  a 
thousand  workers  voted  to  strike.  The  next  day,  a  majority  of  both  shifts 
refused  to  work.  Union  demands  called  for  equal  pay  for  women  and 
children,  union  recognition  and  a  $20  minimum  weekly  wage.  The 
demands  were  called  "beyond  reason"  by  company  superintendent  J. A. 
Baugh.  After  four  days  of  picketing,  the  state  militia  was  dispatched  to 
Gastonia  on  April  4,  ostensibly  to  protect  private  property,  a  task  for 
which  they  proved  singularly  ineffective.  On  the  evening  of  April  18,  a 
mob  of  masked  men  attacked  the  union's  headquarters,  smashed  its 
windows,  destroyed  the  commissary  and  virtually  demolished  the  pre- 
mises. While  the  mob  raged,  250  militiamen  slept  less  than  500  feet  away. 
Eventually  the  militia  was  withdrawn  but  in  its  place  the  Loray  Mill 
organized  its  own  private  army  called  the  Committee  of  100;  plant 
foremen  were  deputized  as  sheriffs  and  policemen.44  A  reign  of  terror  was 
launched  against  the  striking  workers. 

The  union  appealed  to  Governor  Max  Gardner  for  protection,  and 
warned,  "If  you  don't  have  us  protected,  we  know  how  to  protect 
ourselves/'45  A  tent  colony  was  built  to  replace  the  destroyed  union  hall, 
protected  by  an  armed  security  force  of  workers.  Meanwhile  the  picket 
lines  continued,  suffering  armed  attacks  by  police  and  company  thugs.  A 
72-year-old  woman  supporting  the  strike  was  thrown  to  the  ground  and 
beaten  with  gun  butts.  One  striker  was  blackjacked  and  thrown  uncon- 
scious onto  a  railroad  track.  Striking  families  were  evicted  from  com- 
pany houses  and  moved  into  the  tent  colony.  The  local  press  attacked  the 
union,  not  only  for  its  Communist  leadership  but  for  its  advocacy  of  the 
equality  of  Black  and  white  workers  and  its  admission  of  both  to 
membership.  Although  Blacks  were  15  percent  of  the  county  population, 
few  were  allowed  to  work  in  the  plant,  except  as  sweepers.  The  Gastonia 
Daily  Gazette  published  a  front-page  picture  of  an  American  flag  with  a 
snake  coiled  at  its  base,  and  the  inscription:  "Communism  in  the  south 

192 


Five 


Kill  it."  Flyers  were  distributed  asking,  "Would  you  belong  to  a  union 
which  opposes  White  Supremacy?"46 

By  June,  Gastonia  had  become  a  garrison  city.  On  the  afternoon  of 
June  7,  some  local  police  went  out  on  a  drunk,  and  ended  up  beating  up 
and  shooting  a  local  restaurant  owner.  One  of  the  marauders  was  an  ex- 
officer  who  had  been  fired  from  the  force  for  beating  up  a  local  woman 
but  who  had  since  been  brought  back  into  service  to  help  crush  the  strike. 
That  night,  these  officers  were  part  of  a  party  that  included  police  chief 
A.D.  Aderholt,  which  raided  the  workers'  tent  colony  without  a  warrant. 
When  they  were  blocked  from  entering,  the  police  opened  fire.  Four 
policemen  and  one  organizer  were  shot;  Chief  Aderholt  was  mortally 
wounded  and  died  the  next  day.  The  Committee  of  100  led  by  Major  A.L. 
Bulwinkle,  formerly  and  subsequently  a  U.S.  congressman  and  attorney 
for  the  Loray  Mill,  raided  the  camp  en  masse.  More  than  a  hundred 
striking  men  and  women  were  thrown  into  jail  and  beaten.  Of  these,  23 
were  held  for  murder  or  muderous  assault.  Beatings  by  the  police  and  the 
Committee  of  100  continued,  but  only  one  policeman  was  disciplined  for 
excessive  use  of  force,  for  beating  a  Charlotte  Observer  reporter  whom 
he  took  to  be  a  striker.  The  officer  was  immediately  hired  by  Manville- 
Jencks  as  a  security  guard. 

On  the  eve  of  the  murder  trial,  the  Charlotte  News  editorialized:  "The 
leaders  of  the  National  Textile  Workers'  Union  are  communists,  and  are 
a  menace  to  all  that  we  hold  most  sacred.  They  believe  in  violence,  arson, 
murder.  They  want  to  destroy  our  institutions,  our  traditions.  They  are 
undermining  all  morality,  all  religion.  But  nevertheless  they  must  be 
given  a  fair  trial,  although  everyone  knows  that  they  deserve  to  be  shot  at 
sunrise."47  The  prosecution  staff  numbered  10,  including  Major  Bul- 
winkle; R.G.  Cherry,  state  commander  of  the  American  Legion;  and 
Clyde  Hoey,  a  brother-in-law  of  Governor  Gardner.  Heywood  Broun, 
covering  the  trial  for  The  Nation  magazine,  observed  that  "the  officials  of 
Gastonia  have  been  from  the  beginning  no  more  than  the  hired  mus- 
keteers of  the  mill  owners."48 

When  one  of  the  trial  jurors  went  violently  insane,  the  judge  declared  a 
mistrial  and  ordered  a  new  trial  for  September  30.  News  of  the  mistrial 
unleashed  a  reign  of  terror  in  Gaston  and  surrounding  counties.  The 
strikers'  headquarters  at  Gastonia  and  Bessamer  City  were  destroyed  by 
raids  of  500  men.  NTWU  organizers  were  kidnapped,  flogged  or  tarred 
and  feathered,  and  seven  were  arrested  for  "insurrection  to  overthrow  the 
State  of  North  Carolina."  A  workers'  rally  was  called  for  September  14  in 
South  Gastonia,  in  response  to  which  American  Legion  members  were 
deputized  to  close  all  roads  leading  to  the  meeting.  Three  days  before  the 

193 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

rally,  the  Gastonia  Gazette  editorialized,  "They  have  been  warned  to  stay 
away.  If  they  persist  in  coming,  they  do  so  at  their  own  risk.  This  is  the 
word  from  the  good  people  of  that  community  who  have  been  law- 
abiding  about  as  long  as  they  can  stand  it." 

On  the  night  of  the  rally,  a  mob  collected  to  prevent  the  meeting.  A 
truck  bearing  22  strikers  from  Bessamer  City  tried  to  enter  South 
Gastonia  and  was  turned  back.  Fifteen  autos  carrying  strikebreakers  set 
out  in  pursuit.  After  a  five-mile  chase  the  truck  was  stopped  and  a  volley 
of  shots  was  fired  into  the  unarmed  strikers.  One  of  them,  Mrs.  Ella  May 
Wiggins,  a  mother  of  five,  was  killed.  A  Gaston  County  grand  jury 
refused  to  indict  anybody  in  connection  with  the  murder  of  Ella  May 
Wiggins,  but  six  weeks  later  after  a  national  outcry,  initiated  by  the 
International  Labor  Defense,  Governor  Gardner  assigned  a  special 
prosecutor  to  reopen  the  case.  Five  employees  of  the  Loray  Mill  were 
finally  indicted.  The  Manville-Jenckes  Company  went  their  bail.  When 
the  case  came  to  trial  early  the  next  year,  all  5  were  acquitted  although  the 
murder  had  been  committed  in  the  presence  of  at  least  50  persons.49 

The  second  trial  of  Fred  Beal  and  the  NTWU  organizers  in  connection 
with  the  death  of  Chief  Aderholt  began  in  September  1929.  By  then  the 
prosecution  had  withdrawn  the  first  degree  murder  charge  and  had  freed 
9  of  the  original  16  defendants,  including  the  3  women.  This  left  the 
prosecution  with  a  conspiracy  indictment,  but  that  was  shattered  when 
the  surviving  police  in  the  raid  on  the  tent  colony  testified  under  cross- 
examination  that  when  they  arrived  at  the  colony,  everything  was 
peaceful,  and  that  they  had  brought  with  them  a  number  of  shotguns  and 
rifles  in  addition  to  the  regular  police  equipment.  The  state  then  made  its 
case  on  the  basis  of  the  defendants'  beliefs  in  communism,  racial  equality 
and  atheism.  One  defendant  was  discredited  by  the  sparmy-minded 
prosecutor  with  the  words,  "If  teaching  racial  equality  does  not  tend  to 
impeach  a  witness,  I  do  not  know  what  would."  Another  defense  witness 
was  impeached  for  denying  the  existence  of  "a  Supreme  Being  who 
punishes  for  wrong  and  rewards  for  virtues."  In  his  summation  to  the 
jury,  prosecutor  E.T.  Cansler  argued,  "The  union  organizers  came, 
fiends  incarnate,  stripped  of  their  hoofs  and  horns,  bearing  guns  instead 
of  pitchforks."50  After  57  minutes  of  deliberation  the  jury  returned  a 
verdict  of  guilty.  Judge  Barnhill  sentenced  Beal  and  three  other  northern 
defendants  to  17-20  years  in  the  state  prison;  two  Gastonia  men  received 
12-15  years,  the  other,  5-7  years.  One  year  later,  on  August  20, 1930,  the 
Supreme  Court  of  North  Carolina  upheld  their  sentences. 

Southern  justice  had  proven  consistent.  A  North  Carolina  journalist 
wrote  in  summary  of  the  Gastonia  events:  "In  every  case  where  strikers 

194 


Five 


were  put  on  trial,  strikers  were  convicted;  in  not  one  case  where  anti- 
unionists  or  officers  were  accused  has  there  been  a  conviction."51  The 
state  of  labor  relations  that  pertain  today  in  North  Carolina  were 
established  in  those  grim  days  of  the  Loray  strike  and  its  aftermath. 

Actually,  with  the  depression,  things  got  worse.  Calvin  Coolidge  in 
one  of  his  moments  that  made  folks  wish  he'd  live  up  more  to  his 
nickname  of  "Silent  Cal,"  once  observed  that  "When  more  and  more 
people  are  thrown  out  of  work,  unemployment  results."  The  labor 
movement  faced  a  crisis.  The  American  Federation  of  Labor  had  refused 
to  extend  itself  beyond  narrow  craft-union  boundaries.  The  AFL's 
United  Textile  Workers  had  avoided  Gastonia,  in  part  because  of  the 
Communist  leadership  of  the  NTWU.  "This  aristocracy  of  labor," 
Haywood  Broun  wrote  of  the  AFL,  "is  taking  time  out  to  consolidate  its 
gains.  If  the  communists  did  not  organize  the  workers  of  Gastonia, 
nobody  else  would."52  Southern  textile  owners,  however,  were  not 
always  discerning  enough  to  make  such  distinctions,  when  it  came  to 
their  workers.  In  his  classic  The  Mind  of  the  South  (which  might,  more 
accurately,  have  been  entitled,  "The  Mind  of  the  White  South"),  W.J. 
Cash  suggested, 

. . .  Almost  the  sole  content  of  immediate  actuality  in  these  phantasmagoric 
[Red]  terrors  was,  as  is  well  known,  just  the  peril  of  the  labor  movement,  to  the 
interests,  real  or  imagined,  of  the  ruling  classes,  and  particularly  the  pos- 
sibility of  a  labor  movement  that  should  stand  to  the  left  of  the  highly 
conservative  American  Federation  of  Labor  as  shaped  by  Samuel  Gompers, 
William  Green  and  Matthew  Woll. 

And  when  that  is  clear,  the  case  of  the  South  becomes  more  explicable.  If 
the  Yankee  manufacturer,  long  accustomed  to  labor  unions,  could  be  so 
wrought  upon  fears  that  he  could  without  conscious  hypocrisy,  though  of 
course  not  without  the  unconscious  cunning  of  interest,  see  even  the  lumber- 
ing AFL  as  at  least  dangerously  close  to  being  Red,  then  it  is  readily 
comprehensible  how  the  Southern  cotton-mill  baron,  remembering  unhap- 
pily its  occasional  forays  into  his  territory,  should  get  to  see  it  as  the  flaming 
archangel  of  Moscow  itself — why  the  organs  of  the  Southern  trade,  such  as 
the  Textile  Bulletin  and  the  Manufacturers'  Record,  promptly  set  up  the 
formula:  labor  organizer  equals  Communist  organizer.53 

Partially  in  response  to  the  NTWU  drive  in  Gaston  and  Mecklenburg 
counties,  the  AFL's  United  Textile  Workers  came  to  Marion  in 
McDowell  County,  also  in  1929  and  met  with  a  similar  response.  The 
Marion  Manufacturing  Co.  and  the  Clinchfield  Mills  ran  the  mountain 
city  as  Manville-Jenckes  ran  Gastonia.  None  of  the  company  houses  in 

195 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

Marion's  mill  villages  had  running  water  or  toilets.  The  houses  were  built 
on  stilts,  with  no  wind-breaking  foundations.  Sinclair  Lewis  went  to 
Marion  to  investigate  and  reported:  "A  four-room  house,  in  which  12 
people  may  be  living,  is  just  this:  It  is  a  box  with  an  unscreened  porch.  It 
has  three  living  rooms  and  a  kitchen.  In  each  of  the  living  rooms  there 
are,  normally,  two  double  beds.  In  these  double  beds  there  sleep  any- 
where from  two  to  five  people,  depending  on  their  ages."54  Wages  at  the 
plants  averaged  less  than  $10  a  week,  and  at  least  one  case  was  discovered 
of  a  14-year-old  girl  working  more  than  12  hours  a  day  for  $5  a  week. 

When  an  open  meeting  of  the  UTW  was  held  in  June,  22  union 
members  were  fired.  Marion  Manufacturing  president  R.W.  Baldwin 
rejected  demands  to  reinstate  the  fired  workers,  to  reduce  shifts  to  10 
hours,  and  to  establish  a  grievance  committee.  With  little  help  from 
either  the  AFL  or  the  UTW,  the  plant's  650  workers  struck.  The 
Clinchfield  workers,  900  of  them,  joined  the  strike.  Clinchfield  president 
B.M.  Hart  declared,  "I  cannot  see  that  there  is  any  difference  between 
this  so-called  conservative  union  and  the  Communist  union  in  Gas- 
tonia."  As  the  strike  continued,  scuffles  broke  out  on  picket  lines,  and  the 
company  won  an  injunction  against  the  demonstration.  Governor 
Gardner,  himself  a  textile  mill  owner  from  Shelby,  again  sent  in  the 
militia.  Baldwin  blacklisted  more  than  a  hundred  workers  in  his  plant. 
The  pattern  established  in  Gastonia  was  repeated.  When,  on  August  31, 
Clinchfield  strikers  prevented  a  non-union  worker  from  moving  into  a 
mill-village  house,  74  strikers  were  arrested  and  charged  with  "a  rebellion 
against  the  constituted  authority  of  the  State  of  North  Carolina." 

In  the  early  morning  hours  of  October  2,  workers  walked  out  of  the 
Baldwin  mill,  because  of  harassment  by  the  foreman.  As  they  gathered  at 
the  plant  gate  to  tell  the  day  shift  of  the  strike,  Sheriff  Oscar  Adkins,  a 
local  merchant,  fired  tear  gas  into  their  ranks.  His  1 1  deputies,  taking  the 
cue,  shot  at  the  backs  of  the  retreating  workers.  When  the  shooting 
ended,  6  strikers  lay  dead,  25  seriously  wounded.  In  an  interview  with  the 
Asheville  Citizen  the  next  day,  Baldwin  said:  "I  understand  60  or  75  shots 
were  fired  in  Wednesday's  fight.  If  this  is  true,  there  are  30  or  35  of  the 
bullets  accounted  for.  I  think  the  officers  are  damned  good  marksmen.  If 
I  ever  organize  an  army  they  can  have  jobs  with  me.  I  read  that  the  death 
of  each  soldier  in  the  World  War  consumed  more  than  five  tons  of  lead. 
Here  we  have  less  than  five  pounds  and  these  casualties.  A  good  average, 
I  call  it."55  Eight  deputies  were  charged  with  second-degree  murder.  At 
the  time,  one  of  the  defendants  was  put  on  $2,000  bond  for  shooting  up 
the  union  headquarters.  He  and  five  other  non-union  workers  in  the 
Marion  plant  had  been  deputized  by  Sheriff  Adkins.  Pleading  that  they 

196 


Five 


fired  in  order  to  suppress  a  riot,  the  deputies  were  found  not  guilty.  One 
historian  concluded,  "Against  the  anti-union  policy  of  the  southern  mill 
owners  the  United  Textile  Workers,  affiliated  with  the  conservative 
AFL,  had  fared  no  better  than  the  National  Textile  Workers  Union," 
under  Communist  leadership  in  Gastonia.56  In  the  cemeteries  where  the 
murdered  workers  are  buried,  "there  is  no  argument  about  the  best 
method  of  running  Southern  textile  mills,"  wrote  Sinclair  Lewis.  The 
labor  peace  long  sought  by  the  textile  owners  turned  out  to  be  the  peace 
of  the  graveyard, 

Illusions  of  an  impartial  government,  weighing  equally  the  interests  of 
labor  and  those  of  capital,  were  shattered.  In  Belmont,  a  militiaman  ran 
an  unmenacing  striker  through  with  a  bayonet  and  killed  him,  but  the 
authorities  did  nothing.  Not  one  conviction  was  obtained  in  any  major 
case  of  violence  directed  against  strikers,  not  in  the  killing  of  Mrs. 
Wiggins,  nor  in  the  destruction  of  union  headquarters  in  Gastonia,  nor  in 
the  killings  and  maimings  in  Marion,  nor  in  the  kidnappings  and 
beatings  of  union  organizers  in  Elizabethtown,  Kings  Mountain,  Char- 
lotte or  a  dozen  other  towns  and  villages  in  North  Carolina.  But  the 
Marion  strikers  who  were  arrested  on  the  picket  lines  were  given  up  to  six 
months  of  hard  labor;  and  the  unionists  accused  in  the  Aderholt  slaying, 
up  to  twenty  years.  The  intertwining  of  the  state  and  the  corporation  to 
determine  not  only  labor  conditions  but  the  nature  of  the  criminal  justice 
system  is  a  relationship  that  would  hold,  strengthen  and  become  identical 
with  time. 


D  uring  Ben's  first  week  back  in  Central  Prison  after  the  trial,  a  Black 
inmate  leader  named  Charles  Richardson  was  burned  alive  in  his  cell  one 
night.  Some  white  inmates,  assisted  by  the  guards,  threw  a  five-gallon 
can  of  paint  thinner  into  his  cell,  lit  a  broom  handle,  and  set  him  on  fire. 
The  guards  ignored  his  screams  until  he  was  thoroughly  incinerated. 

A  few  weeks  later,  another  Black  inmate,  John  Cuttino  from  Durham, 
was  burned  to  death  a  few  cells  down  the  corridor  from  Ben.  It  was  about 
1 1:30  at  night  and  all  the  inmates  were  locked  in  their  cells,  which  left  only 
the  guards  with  an  opportunity.  Ben  could  hear  Cuttino's  cries  for  help 
and  saw  flames  reaching  out  of  the  cell.  Ben  and  the  other  men  shouted 
for  the  guards  but  they  didn't  come  for  15  minutes.  By  then,  a  partially 
burned  Bible  was  one  of  Cuttino's  few  possessions  left  recognizable  in  the 
cell. 

Because  the  smoke  was  about  to  suffocate  other  inmates  on  the  upper 

197 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

tiers  in  the  cellblock,  the  prisoners  were  taken  outside  to  the  yard.  This 
was  Ben's  first  opportunity  to  meet  with  the  other  inmates  at  one  time. 
Since  his  arrival  at  Central  the  authorities  had  kept  him  from  meeting 
with  the  general  inmate  population.  When  the  guards  saw  the  prisoners 
meeting  in  the  yard,  they  ordered  the  men  into  the  cafeteria.  The  guards 
knew  they  could  shoot  tear  gas  on  the  prisoners  in  the  dining  hall  with 
much  greater  effect  than  in  the  yard.  Some  400  men  crowded  into  the 
cafeteria  that  was  built  to  hold  only  a  fourth  that  number.  Ben  got  up  and 
called  the  inmates  together  for  some  order. 

After  discussion,  the  men  decided  they  were  not  returning  to  their  cells. 
They  wanted  to  meet  with  the  warden  and  with  Lee  Bounds,  the  head  of 
the  state  corrections  department.  The  prisoners  were  aware  of  their  peril. 
Bounds  had  ordered  the  massacre  at  Central  in  1968  in  which  at  least  6 
inmates  were  killed  and  50  were  wounded.  But  the  danger  of  returning  to 
their  cells— after  the  killings  of  the  young  Panther,  Joe  Waddell,  and 
now  Charles  Richardson  and  John  Cuttino — was  also  clear  and  present. 
Fletcher  K.  Sanders,  the  chief  of  security  for  Central's  west  wing,  came 
into  the  cafeteria,  walked  into  the  middle  of  the  inmates  and  ordered 
them  to  clear  out  of  the  cafeteria  in  30  seconds.  The  hall  fell  silent.  Then 
Ben  stood  up  and  told  Sanders  that  they  weren't  leaving  until  they  saw 
the  warden  and  Lee  Bounds,  that  they  had  violated  no  prison  regula- 
tions, that  they  were  ordered  into  the  cafeteria  by  the  guards  and  would 
stay  until  it  was  safe  to  return  to  the  west  wing. 

Sanders  appealed  to  the  men  not  to  listen  to  Rev.  Chavis,  and  said  that 
he  was  a  troublemaker  who  would  get  them  all  hurt;  that  if  they  didn't 
leave  in  30  seconds,  he  was  going  to  deal  harshly  as  only  a  prison  security 
chief,  left  unchecked,  can  deal.  Ben  again  said  the  men  were  not  leaving. 
He  accused  Sanders  of  attempting  to  provoke  them  into  doing  something 
that  would  precipitate  a  repetition  of  the  1968  assault.  Ben  asked  the 
inmates  to  sit  and  remain  sitting.  Only  2  of  the  400  got  up  and  left;  one  of 
them  turned  around  on  his  way  out  and  came  back.  A  leader  of  the  white 
inmates  stood  up  and  pleaded  for  his  companions  to  stay,  arguing  that 
they  had  a  stake  in  this  resistance  too  because  it  wasn't  safe  for  them  in 
the  west  wing  either. 

Two  hours  later,  an  announcement  came  through  on  the  loudspeaker 
to  the  effect  that  the  warden  wanted  to  see  Ben  Chavis  in  the  yard.  The 
inmates  wouldn't  let  him  leave,  however.  The  assassination  of  George 
Jackson  at  San  Quentin  and  the  pogrom  at  Attica  the  year  before  were 
still  fresh  memories.  One  of  the  men  in  the  cafeteria  had  a  portable 
transistor  radio,  which  was  reporting  a  "rebellion"  at  Central  Prison.  The 
inmates  had  "captured"  the  cafeteria  already,  it  was  reported.  The  death 

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Five 

of  John  Cuttino  by  fire  that  night  was  not  mentioned  on  the  news.  But  the 
men  did  learn  that  Lee  Bounds  was  at  the  prison  and  had  been  there  all 
night. 

Bounds,  who  served  the  prison  system  for  21  years  under  Democratic 
administrations,  started  out  in  1949  as  a  young  law  professor.  After 
becoming  involved  in  a  case  in  which  a  chain-gang  prisoner  was  hand- 
cuffed to  his  cell  bars  for  70  hours  for  telling  another  inmate  that  he  was 
thirsting  for  a  beer,  Bounds  soon  joined  the  University  of  North  Car- 
olina's Institute  of  Government  and  found  prominence  as  a  penologist. 
Bounds  recalls,  "I  just  happened  to  hit  it  right.  There  had  been  a  riot  at 
Central,  and  the  issue  of  reform  was  very  much  in  the  air."  He  counts 
among  his  great  achievements  the  elimination  of  the  stepchain.  Knowing 
that  an  outright  ban  on  leg-chains  would  be  resisted  by  guards,  he 
suggested  that  they  be  fastened  on  prisoners  each  day  rather  than 
permanently  riveted  on.  The  guards  eventually  found  this  inconvenient 
and  eliminated  the  practice  by  disuse.  By  1959,  the  balls-and-chains  were 
banned  altogether.  Still  Bounds,  whom  Will  Rogers  obviously  never 
met,  lamented  the  bad  that  comes  with  the  good,  "It  was  when  we  did 
away  with  the  chains,  the  lash  and  other  forms  of  discipline  that  we  lost 
control  of  the  population  within  the  old  dormitories.  We  had  to  herd 
them  in  and  try  to  control  them  with  the  threat  of  shooting." 

Now,  the  night  of  the  death  of  John  Cuttino,  Bounds  finally  sent  word 
he  would  meet  with  a  delegation  of  the  prisoners.  Five  were  chosen:  three 
Blacks  including  Ben,  and  two  whites.  Bounds  explained  right  off  that  he 
was  not  at  Central  in  response  to  their  demands,  but  just  kind  of 
happened  to  be  in  the  neighborhood.  He  would,  however,  hear  them  out. 
By  then  the  prisoners  had  drawn  up  a  list  of  ten  grievances  to  present. 
They  wanted  an  inmate  grievance  board,  the  right  of  inmates  to  have 
attorneys  at  disciplinary  hearings,  five  fire  extinguishers  on  each  cell 
block,  etc.  Bounds  replied  that  as  a  reputed  penologist,  professor  at 
Chapel  Hill  and  head  of  the  corrections  department,  he  was  their 
superior,  and  worked  and  communicated  on  a  different  level.  But  what 
he  had  here  apparently  was  not  a  failure  by  the  inmates  to  communicate. 
Negotiations  began  which  eventually  resulted  in  the  setting  up  of  an 
inmate  grievance  commission,  allowing  prisoners  to  have  their  attorneys 
along  for  the  hearing.  And  that  day,  five  fire  extinguishers  were  installed 
in  the  west  wing  at  Central  Prison,  for  the  first  time  in  its  more  than  100- 
year  history. 

Central  is  no  worse  than  most  of  the  76  other  units  that  make  up  the 
Raleigh  Archipelago.  Guards  administer  medicine  instead  of  medics, 
and  sick  call  is  held  only  twice  a  week,  with  inspections  conducted  on 

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Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

desktops.  Medical  equipment  and  sterilization  are  unknown  elements  in 
these  inspections.  Inmates  have  a  10-month  waiting  period  for  false  teeth. 
Until  1974,  the  entire  prison  system  had  no  preventive  medicine  nor  food 
dietician  of  any  kind;  one  oral  surgeon  worked  half  a  day  a  week.  In 
recent  years,  unnatural  deaths  of  prisoners  have  averaged  one  every  four 
weeks,  according  to  Charles  Wilson,  research  director  for  the  Depart- 
ment of  Social  and  Rehabilitation  and  Control. 

The  Raleigh  Archipelago  has  come  into  some  notoriety  in  the  1970s, 
largely  through  the  work  of  the  North  Carolina  Advisory  Committee  to 
the  U  nited  States  Commission  on  Civil  Rights,  and  through  a  number  of 
lawsuits  filed  by  the  nascent  North  Carolina  Prisoners'  Union.  In 
February  1976,  the  Advisory  Committee,  chaired  by  Rev.  W.W.  Finla- 
tor,  issued  a  report  of  its  findings  after  conducting  public  hearings, 
independent  research  and  first-hand  on-site  inspections  of  several  pris 
ons.  The  Committee  found  that,  while  nearly  60  percent  of  the  inmates 
are  Black,  the  Division  of  Prisons  had  no  Black  superintendents  at  its  77 
facilities;  only  21.4  percent  of  the  more  than  5,000  employees  were  Black; 
among  professionals,  no  women  could  be  found.  One  full-time  doctor 
and  a  quarter-time  dentist  were  the  only  Blacks  in  the  upper  *ank:. 
Sadism  characterized  the  guards'  behavior  toward  the  inmates.  Women 
were  disciplined  by  denying  them  clothing  until  "her  attitude  changed." 
(Almost  20  percent  of  the  staff  at  the  Women's  Correctional  Center  were 
men.)  At  Central  Prison,  fire  hoses  with  nozzle  pressure  of  about  70 
pounds  and  pump  pressure  of  about  120  pounds  were  used  to  knock 
down  the  inmates. 

The  Fourth  U.S.  Circuit  Court  of  Appeals,  ruling  in  January  1976  on  a 
prisoners'  suit,  substantially  upheld  the  findings  of  the  Finlator  Commit- 
tee. Retired  U.S.  Supreme  Court  Justice  Tom  C.  Clark,  who  sat  as  a 
member  of  the  circuit  court,  said  that  Central's  "Chinese  cell"  was  "so 
bizarre  that  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  such  a  situation  could  exist  in  our 
■  ociety."  He  said  the  cell  is  "reminiscent  of  the  Black  Hole  of  Calcutta." 
According  to  the  court,  the  cell  has  "no  bedding,  no  light  and  no  toilet 
facilities,  save  a  hole  in  the  floor."  Some  prisoners  have  been  placed  in  the 
cell  for  up  to  three  months  at  a  time. 

Clark's  opinion  noted  that  federal  courts  are  "most  reluctant  to 
interfere  in  the  administration  of  state  or  federal  prison  systems,"  but 
argued  that  the  abuses  in  North  Carolina  were  so  severe  that  the  court 
was  compelled  to  act. 


With  the  violent  suppression  of  the  1929  labor  upsurge  and  the 
scarcity  of  jobs  in  the  years  to  come,  the  textile  barons  "successfully 

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Five 

combined  the  personal  relationships  of  an  agrarian  society  with  modern 
personnel  methods,  re-established  channels  of  communication  with  their 
'people,'  tutored  overseers  to  shun  arbitrary  command,  and  cultivated  in 
the  factory  an  environment  of  living  folkways."57  Not  that  the  re- 
established carrot  eliminated  the  stick:  A  Senate  subcommittee  on  civil 
liberties,  headed  by  Robert  M.  LaFollette,  Jr.,  found  that  twenty 
Southern  textile  firms  laid  out  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  between 
1933-37,  the  years  studied  by  the  subcommittee,  for  the  spying  and 
strikebreaking  services  of  the  Pinkerton  agency  and  others.  Of  eighty 
corporations  in  the  country  that  purchased  more  than  a  thousand  dollars 
of  tear  gas  and  poison  gas  in  those  years,  nine  were  Southern  textile 
companies,  two  were  textile  subsidiaries  of  rubber  firms,  and  one  was  an 
employers  association  in  North  Carolina's  Alamance  County.58  The 
"cheap  and  contented  labor"  advertised  by  Southern  textile  and  power 
company  owners  to  attract  Northern  capital  had  proved  to  be  a  bit  more 
quarrelsome  than  expected. 

In  1935  the  Congress  of  Industrial  Organizations  was  formed  and  its 
drive  for  industrial  unionization  challenged  the  older,  conservative  and 
craft-oriented  AFL.  Moreover— and  in  no  small  part  due  to  the  Commu- 
nist influence  in  the  organizing  drives — no  CIO  national  union  excluded 
Black  members  nor  shunted  them  into  "Jim  Crow"  locals.  There  was 
only  one  exception  to  this  rule — the  Textile  Workers  Union  of  Amer- 
ica—an exception  that  helped  to  dictate  the  future  course  of  labor  and 
race  relations  for  North  Carolina.59  By  the  end  of  the  decade  which  saw 
labor  organized  as  never  before  throughout  the  United  States,  virtually 
no  mills  in  North  Carolina  were  unionized. 

Roosevelt's  National  Industrial  Recovery  Act,  which  lasted  until  1937, 
demanded  an  industrial  code  recognizing  labor's  collective  bargaining 
rights.  The  Tobacco  Workers  International  Union, of  the  AFL,  which 
had  until  then  been  active  only  on  the  fringes  of  the  industry,  began  to 
move  into  Winston-Salem  and  Durham.  The  momentum  of  the  NRA 
period  carried  past  1937.  Workers  at  American,  Liggett  &  Myers,  P.J. 
Lorillard  all  came  into  the  union. 

At  R.J.  Reynolds,  the  largest  tobacco  corporation  in  the  capitalist 
world,  the  CIO's  Food,  Tobacco  and  Allied  Workers  (FT A),  under 
Communist  leadership,  won  a  contract  in  1944.  FTA's  Local  22  for  years 
represented  the  largest  single  organized  industrialized  enterprise  in  the 
South.  It  was  not  a  victory  that  came  easily.  The  founder  of  the  Reynolds 
monopoly,  Richard  Joseph  Reynolds,  came  to  Winston-Salem  from  the 
family  plantation  in  Virginia.  His  father  had  been  one  of  the  largest 

201 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

slaveholders  in  the  country,  and  his  progeny  were  to  carry  over  a  similar 
set  of  labor  relations  into  the  twentieth  century.  Foremen  were  recruited 
from  among  the  chain-gang  guards  on  the  country  roads.  Workers  in  the 
plants  had  no  lunch  facilities,  no  decent  rest  rooms,  no  sick  leaves,  no 
vacations,  no  seniority,  no  paid  holidays,  no  job  security.  The  big  FTA 
organizing  drive  came  in  June  1943  when  a  sick  Black  worker  dropped 
dead  on  the  job  after  his  foreman  refused  to  let  him  go  home.  A  sit-down 
strike  began  in  the  dead  man's  room  and  several  other  departments 
joined  in  spontaneously.  Seven  thousand  Reynolds  workers  soon  joined 
the  union.  When  three  years  later  they  finally  got  a  contract  that  granted 
more  than  union  recognition,  it  provided  a  40-hour  week  with  time-and- 
a-half  for  overtime,  paid  vacations  and  holidays,  grievance  procedures, 
and  the  largest  wage  gains  in  the  history  of  the  industry.60 

FTA  militance,  with  Communist  insistence,  depended  on  the  unity  of 
Black  and  white  workers  operating  as  a  single  unit.  Even  the  CIO  top 
leadership  in  those  days  provided  "colored  hotel"  accommodations  for 
its  Black  convention  delegates,  and  allowed  for  segregated  toilets  and 
drinking  facilities  in  unionized  Southern  plants.  After  the  world  war,  in 
announcing  Operation  Dixie,  its  Southern  organizing  drive,  the  CIO 
announced  it  would  respect  the  "traditions  of  the  South." 

In  a  state  where  segregation  was  required  by  law,  the  FTA's  Winston- 
Salem  local  with  10,000  members  comprised  an  obvious  threat  to 
companies  which  as  a  matter  of  course  play  white  against  Black  to  keep 
wages  down.  Miranda  Smith,  a  Black  woman  worker  at  Reynolds, 
earning  40  cents  an  hour  in  1940,  rose  to  the  leadership  of  Local  22.  A 
Communist  Party  militant,  she  eventually  became  director  at  the  age  of 
32  of  the  FTA's  south  Atlantic  region.  She  died  shortly  thereafter  and 
was  memorialized  by  the  biggest  funeral  procession  in  Winston-Salem 
history,  at  which  Paul  Robeson  sang  to  thousands  of  Black  and  white 
workers.  It  was  largely  Miranda  Smith's  leadership  in  the  efforts  at  unity 
of  the  workers  that  brought  the  wrath  of  the  companies,  the  state  and  the 
CIO  bureaucracy  down  on  the  FTA. 

Local  22  paid  dearly  for  its  efforts  and  its  principles.  In  1946  the  union 
waged  a  bitter  strike  against  the  Piedmont  Leaf  Tobacco  Company  in 
Winston-Salem.  The  union  was  asking  65  cents  an  hour.  Company- 
influenced  police  were  especially  brutal  against  Black  strikers.  Mrs. 
Margaret  DeGraffenried,  mother  of  four,  was  beaten  by  police  during 
the  strike  and  sentenced  to  three  months  on  a  road  gang.  Cal  Roberson 
Jones,  a  worker  at  another  tobacco  plant,  who  happened  to  pass  by  the 
Piedmont  plant,  was  beaten  by  police  and  sentenced  to  eight  months  on 
the  chain  gang.  A  white  Local  22  organizer,  Philip  Koritz,  came  to  Jones' 

202 


Five 


defense  during  the  beating,  and  was  himself  beaten  and  sentenced  to  six 
months  on  a  road  gang.  Betty  Keel  Williams,  a  young  woman  striker,  was 
given  30  days.61 

The  House  Committee  on  Un-American  Activities,  which  included 
among  its  members  freshman  Richard  Nixon,  came  to  Winston-Salem 
and  set  up  shop  at  the  Robert  E.  Lee  Hotel.  The  Cold  War  was  now  in  full 
force,  the  "first  shot  fired"  directed  at  the  Left  within  the  trade  union 
movement.  Ten  international  unions  were  expelled  from  the  CIO  for 
their  Left  leadership,  among  them  the  FTA.  Local  22  was  targeted  for 
destruction  through  raiding  by  other  CIO  unions.  Scores  of  CIO  person- 
nel came  to  Winston-Salem  to  undermine  the  FTA.  The  first  anti- 
Communist  law  of  the  Cold  War  period,  the  Taft-Hartley  Law,  made 
Communist  membership  and  leadership  in  unions  illegal  and  curtailed 
the  right  to  strike.  Taft-Hartley  was  passed  in  1947,  and  immediately 
afterward  North  Carolina  passed  one  of  the  first  "right  to  work"  laws  in 
the  country,  outlawing  the  closed  union  shop.  Armed  with  Taft-Hartley, 
the  "right  to  work"  law  and  the  collaboration  of  the  CIO  national 
leadership,  Reynolds  Tobacco  was  able  to  "destabilize"  Local  22,  25 
years  before  that  word  became  synonymous  in  government  jargon  with 
the  forcible  overthrow  of  legally  elected  bodies.  In  a  1950  National  Labor 
Relations  Board  election  at  the  R.J.  Reynolds  plants  in  Winston-Salem, 
Local  22  emerged  on  top  with  3,223  votes.  However,  the  AFL's  tobacco 
union  received  1,514;  a  CIO  splinter  union,  521;  and  "no  union,"  3,426. 
Reynolds  refused  to  enter  into  collective  bargaining  with  the  FTA,  and 
has  now  remained  unorganized  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.62  One  result  of 
the  Reynolds  open  shop  is  a  productivity  rate  about  three  times  that  of 
union  shops.63  According  to  former  Reynolds  vice-president  Charles 
Wade,  the  FTA's  union  drive  "was  primarily  a  Negro  issue,"  but  "now 
we've  licked  that  problem  and  there  is  no  need  for  a  union."64 

It  is  no  credit  to  the  TWIU  that  today  Reynolds,  the  open-shop 
employer,  has  the  biggest  Black  employment— 25  percent — in  the  tobac- 
co industry,  although  even  that  is  half  of  what  it  used  to  be.  The  TWIU 
originally  signed  "sweetheart  contracts"  over  the  heads  of  the  workers  at 
Liggett  &  Myers,  Reynolds,  American  and  Lorillard  in  the  union's  salad 
days  during  the  first  world  war.  But  in  the  post-war  period  Reynolds 
reduced  wages  in  its  plants  without  resistance  from  the  union;  conse- 
quently, TWIU  membership  declined  from  15,000  in  1916  to  1,500  in  1925. 

The  TWIU's  segregationist  policies  have  plagued  its  efforts  to  organize 
Black  workers  at  Reynolds  ever  since.  Hence,  the  FTA,  under  the 
initiative  of  the  Southern  Negro  Youth  Congress,  was  able  to  organize 
Reynolds  and  win  the  National  Labor  Relations  Board  election  in  1944, 

203 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 


where  the  TWIU  could  not.  That  defeat  moved  the  TW1U  to  resolve  in 
1946  not  to  organize  any  local  plants  on  a  segregated  basis.  But  the  gap 
between  resolutions  and  performances  became  an  abyss  in  this  case.  In 
the  1950s  new  white  workers  were  employed  while  Black  TWIU  members 
were  laid  off  with  little  union  opposition.  The  influence  of  the  Klan  and 
White  Citizens  Council  in  local  union  leadership  led  to  the  disturbing 
situation  of  at  least  token  integration  at  non-union  Reynolds  and  not 
even  a  token  at  unionized  plants. 

With  new  federal  civil  rights  laws,  some  gains  were  made  in  the  years 
1964-68.  A  few  Black  workers  were  upgraded  to  more  skilled  positions, 
and  the  union  merged  its  Black  and  white  locals.  Even  so,  Blacks 
remained  the  only  janitors  and  the  only  shippers,  except  for  their  white 
foremen.  With  the  introduction  of  mechanization,  these  jobs  were 
gradually  but  substantially  reduced,  thus  affecting  mainly  the  Black 
workers.  Whereas  in  1940  Blacks  constituted  54.9  percent  of  the  tobacco 
workforce  in  North  Carolina,  by  1950  they  were  reduced  to  42.3  percent, 
and  by  1960,  31.6  percent.  Today  Blacks  are  merely  22  percent  of  the 
tobacco  workforce  in  the  state,  which  contains  46  percent  of  all  cigarette 
workers  and  35  percent  of  all  tobacco  workers  in  the  country.65 


1  hat  was  November  30, 1972,  when  Ben  led  the  prisoner  delegation  to 
meet  Corrections  Secretary  Lee  Bounds  to  secure  some  protection  from 
fire.  On  December  16,  the  United  Church  of  Christ  paid  a  $50,000  appeal 
bond  and  Rev.  Chavis  walked  out  of  Central  Prison  to  begin  the  long 
appeals  process  for  the  Wilmington  10.  The  next  day  he  flew  to  New  York 
to  participate  in  a  conference  that  was  preparatory  to  establishing  a 
national  organization  to  defend  political  activists  and  victims  of  repres- 
sion. The  meeting  was  initiated  by  remnants  of  what  had  been  the 
National  United  Committee  to  Free  Angela  Davis  and  all  Political 
Prisoners,  which  had  built  perhaps  the  greatest  mass  movement  in 
history  around  a  single  prisoner.  Angela  Davis  was  herself  on  hand  for 
the  conference  that  day  and  Ben  also  met  Charlene  Mitchell,  who  had 
organized  the  Angela  Davis  defense  movement.  Other  organizations  that 
were  helping  put  together  this  new  movement  included  the  National 
Conference  of  Black  Lawyers,  the  Attica  Brothers  Defense  Fund,  Puerto 
Rican  Socialist  Party,  Communist  Party,  the  anti-war  People's  Coalition 
for  Peace  and  Justice,  Women's  International  League  for  Peace  and 
Freedom,  the  Commission  for  Racial  Justice  and  others.  Ben  had  the 
opportunity  to  meet  his  counterparts  from  other  movements  and  to 


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acquaint  them  for  the  first  time  with  the  situation  in  North  Carolina, 
which  even  the  more  knowledgeable  among  them  still  considered  a  New 
South  showcase.  The  day-long  meeting  was  an  important  experience  for 
Rev.  Chavis  and  his  new  companions,  and  together  they  agreed  to  begin 
work  on  a  founding  conference  for  their  new  national  organization. 

Meantime,  in  Wilmington  things  were  still  out  of  hand.  The  Rights  of 
White  People  continued  to  build  up  their  arms  caches,  hold  park  rallies 
with  arms  drills,  and  ride  in  caravans  through  Black  neighborhoods  to 
intimidate  the  people.  With  the  release  of  the  Rev.  Chavis  from  prison, 
new  assaults  were  launched  against  Wilmington  Blacks.  This,  despite  the 
fact  that  Ben  had  been  assigned  to  direct  the  Washington,  D.C. -Mary- 
land office  of  the  Commission  for  Racial  Justice. 

Ben  still  faced  charges  in  the  Wilmington  Three  case  with  Molly  and 
Leatrice  Hicks,  and  trial  was  scheduled  for  late  Spring  1973,  only  a  few 
months  away.  This  was  to  be  one  of  the  strangest  cases  in  the  history  of 
North  Carolina  jurisprudence,  a  history  hardly  void  of  anomalies.  Molly 
Hicks  had  been  one  of  the  most  active  adults  in  support  of  the 
Wilmington  student  movement  and  Leatrice  came  out  of  that  movement 
to  join  the  Temple  of  the  Black  Messiah.  In  the  wake  of  the  violence  at  the 
Gregory  Memorial  Church  in  February  1971,  Molly  Hicks  had  asked  for 
police  protection  for  her  house  in  which  she  and  Leatrice  lived  alone.  On 
the  evening  of  March  13,  Molly  Hicks  was  at  her  Seventh  Day  Adventist 
church.  Leatrice  was  asleep  in  the  upstairs  of  the  house.  Three  young 
Black  teenagers,  Clifton  Eugene  Wright,  Jerome  McClain  and  Donald 
Nixon,  were  downstairs  in  the  parlor.  As  reported  on  the  next  day's  news, 
someone  knocked  on  the  door,  Clifton  Wright  went  to  the  door  and  an 
unidentified  white  person  blew  his  head  off.  Ben  was  at  home  in  Oxford 
at  the  time,  but  three  months  later  the  FBI  asked  to  interview  him,  Molly 
and  Leatrice  Hicks.  The  three  agreed  to  the  interview  if  it  could  be  held  in 
James  Ferguson's  law  office  in  Charlotte.  It  was  peculiar  enough  that 
Ben  and  Molly  Hicks  should  have  been  questioned  at  all,  since  even  the 
government  agreed  they  were  nowhere  near  the  house  at  the  time  of  the 
murder.  When  the  FBI  asked  Ben  who  might  have  killed  young  Wright, 
he  answered  that  he  had  no  knowledge  but  guessed,  given  Molly  and 
Leatrice  Hicks'  activities,  it  might  have  been  an  ROWP  night  rider. 

When,  months  later,  in  December  1971,  a  week  after  the  federal 
indictments  came  down  against  Ben  and  Jim  Grant,  Ben  was  arrested 
again,  this  time  with  the  two  Hicks  women,  they  found  that  Donald 
Nixon  and  Jerome  McClain  were  also  in  jail.  In  the  months  since  Wright 
was  killed,  Nixon  and  McClain  had  become  narcotics  addicts  and  had 
pulled  off  a  number  of  burglaries  and  robberies  around  Wilmington. 

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Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

Now,  in  jail,  they  signed  a  statement  saying  that  they  had  accidentally 
killed  Wright,  although  the  gun  was  never  discovered  and  they  had  no 
idea  where  the  murder  weapon  could  be.  Further,  the  Nixon-McClain 
story  went,  they  called  Ben  in  Oxford  and  he  made  up  the  story  about  the 
white  man  for  them  to  tell  the  police;  and  Molly  and  Leatrice  went  along 
with  the  story.  Hence  the  arrests  of  Rev.  Chavis,  Molly  and  Leatrice 
Hicks  on  charges  of  accessory  after  the  fact  of  murder,  with  bond  set  at 
$10,000  each  (and  Ben's  bail  raised  to  $100,000  when  he  told  a  Charlotte 
meeting  that  he  someday  wanted  to  visit  Africa).  Meanwhile,  McClain, 
one  of  the  admitted  "murderers"  was  released  outright,  and  Nixon,  who 
had  also  confessed,  was  let  off  with  $3,000  bond  on  charges  of  involun- 
tary manslaughter.  What  was  so  peculiar  about  the  state's  case  was  that 
by  allowing  Nixon  to  plead  guilty  to  involuntary  manslaughter,  the 
prosecution  and  the  courts  thereby  ruled  that  Wright's  death  was 
accidental.  Yet  they  charged  Rev.  Chavis  and  the  Hickses  with  knowl- 
edge of  a  murder  which  the  state  had  already  ruled  did  not  really  happen. 

While  Ben  prepared  his  defense,  he  continued  to  work  for  the  founding 
of  the  new  national  defense  organization.  In  the  call  to  the  founding 
conference,  the  coalition  argued  that  "North  Carolina  has  particularly 
become  a  laboratory  for  new  methods  of  racist  repression."  Here  was  a 
group  that  filled  a  great  need  as  far  as  Ben  was  concerned — a  group  made 
up  of  diverse  forces  with  long  years  of  experience  in  organized  mass 
defense  of  other  victims  like  himself — Angela  Davis,  the  Puerto  Rican 
Nationalist  Party  leaders,  the  Wounded  Knee  defendants,  the  San 
Quentin  Six,  the  Attica  Brothers,  the  Soledad  Brothers.  Moreover  this 
was  to  be  a  national  organization,  and  heretofore  national  attention  had 
not  been  paid  to  the  repression  gripping  North  Carolina.  Had  there  been 
a  national  movement  in  defense  of  the  Wilmington  10,  they  might  have 
won  their  case,  Ben  thought.  There  were  other  reasons  for  the  lack  of 
national  attention  on  the  Wilmington  10  trial,  not  the  least  of  which  were 
popular  illusions  about  North  Carolina  as  a  bastion  of  the  New  Southern 
liberalism,  and  the  abandonment  of  the  civil  rights  movement  by  North- 
ern liberals  when  that  movement  came  North.  Further,  there  were  the 
particulars  of  the  case  itself:  These  were,  after  all,  political  activists,  not 
merely  "victims"  and  one  needed  to  support  that  activism  rather  than 
simply  "take  pity."  That  there  were  ten  defendants  rather  than  only  one, 
around  whose  single  personality  support  could  be  garnered,  also  pre- 
sented problems.  But  more  than  anything  else,  what  was  missing  was  a 
national  organization,  whose  purpose  was  to  build  a  mass  movement  in 
defense  of  the  Wilmington  10.  Especially  had  this  been  needed  at  the  trial 
level,  the  most  favorable  time  to  mount  such  an  effort.  Now  it  would  be 

206 


Five 


difficult  for  the  Wilmington  10  in  the  appeals  process,  but  the 
Wilmington  Three  case  was  still  at  the  pre-trial  stage. 

Meeting  in  Chicago  on  May  11-13,  1973,  what  was  to  become  the 
National  Alliance  Against  Racist  and  Political  Repression  was  founded 
by  800  delegates  representing  churches,  trade  unions,  community  organi- 
zations and  campus  groups,  veterans'  movements  and  political  parties. 
The  fledgling  organization  adopted  a  vast  and  varied  program  of  ac- 
tivities to  combat  the  many  forms  of  repression,  from  police  brutality  to 
repressive  legislation,  from  behavior  control  and  human  experimenta- 
tion to  the  repression  of  labor  rights.  The  conference  agreed  that  in  North 
Carolina  could  be  found  the  most  intensive  and  comprehensive  wave  of 
repression  in  the  United  States,  and  agreed  to  make  North  Carolina  a 
national  focus  of  its  activities.  Immediate  attention  would  be  paid  to 
building  national  support  for  the  Wilmington  Three  in  their  upcoming 
trial  the  next  month.  And  Rev.  Ben  Chavis  was  elected  a  vice-chairper- 
son of  the  new  National  Alliance. 

On  the  eve  of  the  Wilmington  Three  trial,  a  new  wave  of  terror  hit 
Wilmington.  ROWP  dynamite  blasts  leveled  the  offices  of  the 
Wilmington  Journal,  which  had  served  the  town's  Black  community 
since  1911.  The  rubble  that  was  the  Journal  building  stood  only  50  feet 
away  from  an  empty  lot  which  had  been  the  site  of  the  Record, 
Wilmington's  Black  newspaper  during  Reconstruction,  which  was 
burned  to  the  ground  by  the  Redshirts  during  the  violent  overthrow  of 
the  Fusion  government  in  1898.  An  ad-hoc  group,  the  Wilmington 
Committee  to  Defend  Victims  of  Racist  and  Political  Repression,  began 
to  rally  Wilmingtonians  to  defend  against  further  terror.  It  called  upon 
national  civil  rights  and  Black  leaders  to  come  to  Wilmington  to  show 
their  support  of  the  Wilmington  Three  and  other  victims.  Among  those 
who  responded  were  Congressman  John  Conyers  who  sent  a  staff 
assistant;  the  Commission  for  Racial  Justice  under  the  leadership  of 
Dr.  Charles  Cobb  of  New  York;  the  Southern  Conference  Education 
Fund,  which  sent  a  full-time  organizer,  Judi  Simmons,  to  work  in 
Wilmington.  Judi  Simmons  had  also  been  elected  a  vice-chairperson  of 
the  newly-formed  National  Alliance  Against  Racist  and  Political  Re- 
pression. The  National  Alliance  sent  one  of  its  chairpersons,  Angela 
Davis,  and  its  executive  secretary,  Charlene  Mitchell. 

At  the  outset  of  the  trial,  defense  attorneys  asked  that  the  charges  be 
removed  from  the  state  of  North  Carolina  and  placed  under  federal 
jurisdiction.  The  defendants'  petition  argued  that  "the  judicial  system 
under  which  the  defendants  are  required  to  be  tried  in  New  Hanover 
County,  including  the  judges,  the  prosecutors  and  the  prospective  jurors 

207 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

and  the  police  officers,  is  antagonistic  toward  the  defendants  and  persons 
of  their  race";  and  further,  that  a  fair  trial  was  unlikely  for  the  defendants 
because  of  their  designation  "by  the  state  to  be  civil  rights  activists  who 
stir  up  trouble  in  the  Black  community  by  encouraging  the  Black 
community  to  actively  assert  its  civil  and  constitutional  rights",  and  that 
the  Wilmington  city  government  which  was  pressing  the  charges,  was 
illegally  constituted  and  had  been  since  the  1898  coup  d'etat.  District 
Court  Judge  John  M.  Walker,  who  had  earlier  called  for  Lieutenant 
William  Cally,  the  My  Lai  murderer,  to  "clean  up"  Wilmington,  was 
sitting  on  the  bench  when  the  Wilmington  Three  petition  was  presented. 
After  reading  it,  Judge  Walker  told  the  press  that  the  government  allows 
"these  kind  of  people  to  operate,  and  if  you  declare  the  government 
unconstitutional,  that  means  open  season  on  everyone,  doesn't  it?" 

The  request  for  transfer  to  federal  jurisdiction  was  dismissed  but  as  the 
trial  began,  Solicitor  Jay  Stroud  did  move  to  reduce  the  charge  against 
Rev.  Chavis  and  Molly  and  Leatrice  Hicks  to  "accessory  after  the  fact  of 
involuntary  manslaughter."  Public  pressure  was  beginning  to  make  itself 
felt.  Angela  Davis,  who  attended  the  trial  for  its  duration,  addressed  a 
rally  of  4,000  Wiimingtonians,  the  largest  civil  rights  demonstration  in 
the  town's  history.  Even  while  she  spoke  to  the  throng,  several  blocks 
away  ROWP  bombs  blasted  a  gaping  hole  in  the  front  of  the  B'nai  Israel 
Temple  synagogue.  The  threats  began  to  tell  on  the  defense  attorneys  and 
some  of  their  supporters.  Some  from  the  defense  team  and  even  some  of 
his  co-workers  urged  Rev.  Chavis  and  the  Hicks  women  to  plea-bargain, 
to  agree  to  say  they  were  guilty  in  return  for  reduced  sentences.  But  the 
defendants  insisted  they  were  innocent  and  that  it  would  be  a  betrayal  of 
themselves  and  the  movement  they  represented  to  enter  a  false  plea, 
however  expedient  it  might  seem  to  some  of  their  friends. 

The  prosecution  and  the  courts  were  under  even  greater  pressure  as 
national  attention  was  brought  on  Wilmington  for  the  first  time,  and  as 
Wilmington  Three  supporters  responded  in  the  streets.  Chief  prosecu- 
tion witness  Donald  Nixon  told  the  court,  under  cross-examination,  that 
even  though  he  had  pleaded  guilty  six  months  earlier  to  involuntary 
manslaughter  in  the  killing  of  Clifton  Wright,  he  had  never  been 
sentenced.  Judge  Robert  D.  Rouse,  Jr.,  sitting  while  protests  in  the 
streets  mounted  with  the  appearance  of  Angela  Davis,  dismissed  all 
charges  against  Rev.  Chavis,  citing  the  lack  of  any  incriminating  evi- 
dence for  the  prosecution.  This  left  Molly  and  Leatrice  Hicks  to  face  a 
jury  decision.  Defense  attorney  John  Harmon  asked  the  jurors  to  use 
their  common  sense  in  their  verdict.  "You  know  who  the  state  was 
looking  for  in  this  case,"  he  said.  "It  wasn't  these  two  women."  The  jury 

208 


Five 


hopelessly  deadlocked  in  deciding  the  fate  of  Leatrice  Hicks  and  the  case 
against  her  ended  in  a  mistrial.  Molly  Hicks  was  found  guilty  but  given  a 
suspended  three-year  sentence.  Donald  Nixon,  the  admitted  killer,  never 
did  serve  time. 

Ben  went  directly  from  Wilmington  to  St.  Louis  to  attend  the  Eighth 
General  Synod  of  the  United  Church  of  Christ.  The  Commission  for 
Racial  Justice  had  initiated  a  resolution  to  have  the  church  put  up  the 
$350,000  bond  to  get  the  other  nine  Wilmington  10  defendants  out  of 
prison.  The  assembly  passed  the  resolution  and  two  weeks  later  all  the 
Wilmington  defendants  were  released  on  bond. 


1  he  textile  monopolies  have  always  led  North  Carolina  against  union- 
ization, and  North  Carolina  has  led  the  country.  In  1955,  the  National 
Right  to  Work  Committee  was  formed  by  Charlotte's  E.S.  Dillard.  Scott 
Hoyman,  southern  director  of  the  Amalgamated  Clothing  and  Textile 
Workers  Union  (ACTWU),  says  that  companies,  as  a  "style  of  life,"'' 
won't  enter  into  union  contracts,  much  as  "violent  racism  was  once  a 
style  of  life.,,  A  bit  inhibited  from  directly  using  racism  themselves,  "the 
textile  firms  instead  turn  their  mailing  lists  over  to  anti-Semitic,  anti- 
Black  trash  sheets  like  the  Militant  Truth.  J.  P.  Stevens  is  one  company 
that  supports  this  rag."66  The  Militant  Truth  is  a  frequently,  though 
irregularly,  published  fundamentalist  newsletter,  which  exhibits  the 
thought  process  of  a  Klan-like  White  Queen,  believing  as  many  as  six 
impossible  things  about  Jews,  Blacks  and  unions  before  breakfast. 

Virtually  all  corporate  spokesmen  in  North  Carolina  are  by  now 
reconciled,  at  least  in  public  statements,  to  the  demise  of  Jim  Crow  as  a 
way  of  life.  But  they  will  bark  at  the  skies  and  spit  in  the  wind  at  the 
mention  of  unions.  Charlotte  corporation  attorney  Whiteford  S. 
Blakeney,  according  to  Hoyman,  will  drop  a  client  if  the  client  agrees  to 
bargain  with  a  union,  thus  proving  he  can  wield  an  axe  by  chopping  off 
his  foot.  Blakeney  is  a  trustee  of  the  National  Right  to  Work  Legal 
Defense  Foundation,  Inc.,  established  in  1968,  which  works  through  the 
courts  to  complement  the  legislative  lobbying  of  the  earlier  formed 
National  Right  to  Work  Committee. 

The  state  legislature  being  as  it  is  a  wholly-owned  subsidiary  of  the 
corporations  and  banks,  Blakeney  and  his  colleagues  have  found  little 
trouble  in  maintaining"right  to  work"  laws  in  North  Carolina.  State  laws 
prohibit  public  employees  from  bargaining  collectively  with  their  em- 
ployer, the  state,  and  in  turn  prevent  the  state,  cities  and  towns  from 


209 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

bargaining  with  public  employees'  unions.  Laws  to  reverse  these  prohibi- 
tions have  never  even  gotten  out  of  committees  of  the  General  Assembly. 
Similarly,  all  efforts  at  allowing  the  "agency  shop"  have  met  with  defeat 
in  legislative  committees,  never  reaching  the  floor  for  debate.  Unlike  the 
union  {h\o)p  in  which  all  workers  must  join  the  union  in  a  plant  under 
contract,  and  which  is  barred  in  North  Carolina  by  its  "right  to  work" 
bill,  the  agency  shop  does  not  demand  compulsory  membership  in  the 
union.  Those  who  do  not  join  the  union  still  receive  all  the  benefits  of  the 
contract — wages,  vacations,  pension,  health  plans,  grievance  protection, 
etc.  Still  the  agency  shop  is  too  strong  a  threat  to  those  who  genuflect 
before  the  totem  of  "free  enterprise." 

North  Carolina  labor  laws  are  a  throwback  to  the  years  before 
industrial  unionism,  a  stage  not  yet  reached  in  this  state.  Workmen's 
compensation  remains  elective,  not  compulsory.  Minors  14  and  15  years 
old  can  work  up  to  a  40-hour  week;  employers  who  violate  the  law  can  be 
"penalized"  with  a  fine  of  only  5-50  dollars.  The  state  minimum  wage  of 
$1.80  per  hour  in  1975  does  not  cover  establishments  with  fewer  than  four 
employees,  state  and  local  government  employees,  employees  under  16  or 
over  65  years  old,  workers  in  the  seafood  or  fishing  industries,  domestic 
workers,  workers  in  charitable,  religious,  educational  and  non-profit 
organizations,  inmates,  news  vendors,  golf  caddies,  theater  doormen, 
part-time  employees,  and  a  fistful  of  other  categories.  Violators  of 
minimum  wage  laws  can  be  fined  10-50  dollars. 

North  Carolina's  complete  suppression  of  a  labor  movement  is  gener- 
ally explained  away  by  corporate  apologists  as  the  result  of  "human 
relations"  programs  and  of  "paternalism."  Back  in  the  1920s,  under  the 
sponsorship  of  Western  Electric,  sociologist  Elton  Mayo  supervised  a 
number  of  studies  to  develop  "human  relations"  techniques  in  industrial 
settings.  Mayo's  results  still  serve  as  the  basic  tenets  of  corporate 
manipulation  of  workers'  attitudes.67  Mayo  discovered  that  industrial 
society  "is  characterized  by  a  social  split,  growing  hostility  and  hatred 
between  various  social  groups,  and  an  absence  of  mutual  understanding 
between  employers  and  workers."68  But,  denying  the  Marxist  premise  of 
class  struggle  inherent  in  a  class  society,  Mayo,  according  to  William 
Whyte  in  his  Organization  Man,  "sees  conflict  primarily  as  a  breakdown 
in  communication.  If  a  man  is  unhappy  or  dissatisfied  in  his  work,  it  is 
not  that  there  is  a  conflict  to  be  resolved  so  much  as  a  misunderstanding 
to  be  cleared  up."69  The  industrial  map  of  North  Carolina  is  dotted  with 
employers  associations,  chambers  of  commerce  and  industrial  de- 
velopers who  pride  themselves  on  "human  relations"  expertise. 

"Paternalism"  they  like  to  call  it,  the  "identification"  of  boss  with 

210 


Five 


worker  and  vice  versa.  The  ruling  class  goes  to  the  country  store  to  keep 
in  touch,  chew  tobacco,  talk  to  folks.  Since  the  state  is  made  up  of  small 
isolated  towns,  provincial  to  the  core,  to  be  a  radical  or  pro-union  is  to 
face  ostracism.  The  pat  on  the  back,  the  turkey  at  Thanksgiving,  the  local 
gossip,  the  Boy  Scout  donation,  the  current  dirty  joke — these  are  the 
weapons  which  face  the  challenger  to  the  prevailing  system  of  doing 
things. 

"Human  relations"  professionals  urge  the  skillfull  manipulation  of 
"symbolic  rewards"  to  acquire  and  secure  the  loyalty  of  workers.  So- 
ciologist Robert  Dubin  argues  that  "status  pay  is  the  'cheapest'  form  of 
payoff  for  the  organization.  It  involves  only  some  kind  of  public 
recognition  by  a  member  of  management  of  a  person's  particular  mer- 
its."70 Celebrations  in  honor  of  veteran  employees,  public  commenda- 
tions, special  badges  and  bonuses,  letters  to  the  workforce  from  the 
employer  at  Christmas — all  are  "symbolic  rewards"  handed  out  with  a 
wink  as  a  matter  of  course  by  North  Carolina's  paternalistic  corpora- 
tions. Companies  hand  out  5-year  pins  and  10-year  pins  for  lengthy 
service.  After  30  years  a  worker  will  receive  a  $30  watch,  a  "symbolic 
reward"  of  a  dollar  for  each  year  at  the  loom  or  the  assembly  line. 
Paternalism  works  in  just  this  way:  A  textile  worker  making  $1.80  an 
hour  is  weakened  by  "brown  lung"  disease,  endemic  to  the  industry,  but 
continues  to  work  for  years  because  his  wife  is  crippled  with  arthritis  and 
the  kids  have  to  eat.  He  calls  himself  "middle  class"  and  roots  for  the 
American  Legion  baseball  team  attached  to  the  mill  and  looks  to  the  day 
his  boy  can  go  the  local  community  college  to  train  for  a  more  highly 
skilled  job  at  the  mill.  By  fostering  a  sense  of  identification  with  the 
company,  management  seeks  to  render  trade  unions  superfluous:  "There 
would  be  no  point  in  a  worker  joining  a  trade  union  and  fighting  to 
defend  his  rights  and  interests  if  he  were  to  believe  that  his  employer 
himself  was  showing  'constant  concern'  for  his  welfare."71 

A  host  of  schemes  are  devised  in  this  continual  corporate  campaign. 
Textiles  Incorporated  of  Gastonia  held  an  "energy  saving  idea"  contest, 
and  presented  a  $25  savings  bond  to  the  best  entry  in  the  plant.  The 
American  Textile  Manufacturers  Institute,  Inc.,  with  headquarters  in 
Charlotte,  publishes  a  monthly  Public  Relations  Pointers  newsletter  to 
pass  on  new  ideas  to  the  textile  barons  for  developing  "employee 
rapport."  Cone  Mills  sponsors  a  Junior  Fishing  Club  for  children  of  its 
employees.  R.  J.  Reynolds  publishes  workers'  favorite  bake  recipes  in  its 
bi-monthly  magazine.  All  the  companies  welcome  "workers'  participa- 
tion" in  the  form  of  suggestions  for  plant  efficiency,  but  decision-making 
of  course  rests  firmly  in  the  hands  of  management.  One  supporter  of 

211 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

"workers'  participation"  contends  that  "the  self-government  of  the  plant 
community  can  only  be  justified  if  it  strengthens  management.  Its 
functions  are  not  only  limited;  they  are  also  strictly  subordinate."72 

While  encouraging  an  I-got-plenty-of-nothing-and-nothing-is-plenty- 
for-me  philosophy  among  employees,  the  textile  industry  leads  all  other 
industries  in  giving  to  churches,  hospitals,  and  private  schools.  In  1973, 
about  $8  million  of  donations  were  given  by  the  textile  industry  to 
philanthropy,  in  a  more  traditional  form  of  paternalism.73  Such  gener- 
osity of  course  is  rewarded  by  the  Internal  Revenue  Service  each  April  15. 

Among  the  favorite  objects  of  corporate  charity  in  North  Carolina  is 
the  church.  Liberal  donations  to  the  local  house  of  worship  has  for  years 
brought  sermons  from  the  pulpit  against  trade  unionism.  Several  com- 
panies in  the  western  mountain  bible  belt  offer  chapel  services  in  the 
plants  before  work.  After  the  Civil  War,  says  the  textile  union's  Scott 
Hoyman,  "The  attitude  toward  industry  in  every  part  of  North  Carolina 
was  that  the  companies  were  our  saviors.  In  Salisbury,  the  local  minister 
was  picked  to  run  the  mill."74 

The  historic  roots  of  religion  in  industry  are  as  long  as  the  history  of 
the  state  itself.  The  North  Carolina  "Statute  of  Oaths"  of  1777,  stipulat- 
ing that  to  qualify  as  a  witness  at  a  trial  one  must  believe  in  divine 
punishment  after  death,  was  used  to  disqualify  Communists  and  other 
non-believers  as  witnesses  during  the  textile  violence  in  the  1920s  and 
1930s.75  During  the  Gastonia  strike  a  mob  singing  "Praise  God  from 
Whom  All  Blessings  Flow,"  rushed  a  boardinghouse  where  it  seized  three 
union  organizers  and  took  them  to  an  adjoining  county  where  they  were 
beaten  and  abandoned.76 

Liston  Pope  in  his  study,  Millhands  and  Preachers,  quotes  a  mill 
official,  "Belonging  to  a  church,  and  attending  it,  makes  a  man  a  better 
worker.  It  makes  him  more  complacent — no,  that's  not  the  word.  It 
makes  him  more  resigned — that's  not  the  word  either,  but  you  get  the 
general  idea."77  H.L.  Mencken  used  to  figure  that  organized  religion 
would  always  prove  more  effective  than  police  force  in  neutralizing 
workers'  strikes.  "The  gospel  scheme  is  far  more  humane.  More,  it  is  far 
cheaper,"  wrote  Mencken,  who  estimated  that  to  put  down  a  strike  of  400 
workers  by  force  might  cost  $10,000-515,000,  whereas  a  good  hell-raising 
revival  would  cost  only  $400-$500.78 

Many  workers  live  in  isolated  communities  in  North  Carolina  and 
belong  to  primitive  pentacostal  sects.  For  some,  church  services  two  or 
three  times  a  week  are  the  "only  entertainment"  available  to  them.79  A 
good  share  of  the  Duke  Endowment  goes  each  year  to  maintaining  the 
rural  Methodist  Church.  Half  of  North  Carolina's  half-million  Method- 


212 


Five 


ists  today  live  in  communities  of  less  than  1,500  persons,  and  are  eligible 
for  Duke  funds.80  R.J.  Reynolds  has  a  chapel  inside  its  huge  Winston- 
Salem  plant  and  maintains  a  number  of  preachers  on  its  payroll.  The 
tobacco  monopoly  acknowledges  that  it  has  "what  we  like  to  call  a 
pastor-counselor,  who  has  a  personal  ministry  exactly  like  a  psychiatrist, 
dealing  with  alcoholism,  family  problems  and  the  like."81  Such  "pastor- 
counselors"  are  likened  by  union  organizers  to  the  traditional  Christian 
missionaries,  teaching  colonial  subjects  to  accept  their  lot  on  earth  in 
return  for  post-mortem  rewards  in  the  sky. 

The  aggregate  results  of  a  half-century  of  company  chaplains,  "pater- 
nalism," and  police  and  vigilante  violence  on  behalf  of  the  ruling  class  in 
North  Carolina  are  fewer  than  160,000  union  members  or  about  6.8 
percent  of  the  state's  production  workers.  Textiles  remain  the  key  to 
unionization  in  this  state  with  one  third  of  the  country's  textile  workers, 
and  in  which  textile  workers  make  up  fully  half  of  all  manufacturing 
workers.  U.S.  Senator  Jesse  Helms  may  try  to  resuscitate  unrevivably 
exhausted  anti-labor  cliches  ("U  nless  enough  Americans  somehow  unite, 
I  must  candidly  say . . .  that  freedom's  days  are  numbered ...  I  am  gravely 
disturbed . . .  about  the  very  real  possibility  of  a  relative  handful  of  union 
bosses  grabbing  hold  of  America's  government . .  .")82  but  the  fact  is  that 
in  his  home  state  unions  are  without  political  power  of  any  kind. 

Some  labor  organizers  hold  that  a  "brown  lung"  movement  can  build 
the  textile  union  in  North  Carolina  the  way  the  "black  lung"  movement 
turned  around  the  United  Mine  Workers  in  the  late  1960s.  Brown  lung,  or 
byssinosis,  is  caused  by  inhaling  cotton  fiber  dust,  which  builds  up  in  the 
lungs  to  cause  difficulty  in  breathing,  uncontrollable  coughing  and 
gradual  destruction  of  the  lungs.  Many  public  health  officials  rank 
brown  lung  as  the  leading  occupational  health  hazard  in  the  state.  While 
textile  companies  argued  that  there  has  never  been  a  diagnosed  case  of 
byssinosis  in  North  Carolina,  Dr.  James  A.  Merchant  of  the  state  Board 
of  Health  reported  that  of  three  textile  plants  he  studied  in  1972,  from  6  to 
25  percent  of  the  workers  suffered  from  the  disease.83 

Another  study  found  that  brown  lung  has  victimized  12-29  percent  of 
all  textile  workers  in  the  last  decade,  and  up  to  41  percent  of  the  workers 
in  the  dustier  areas  of  the  mills.  This  study,  at  the  same  time,  suggested 
collusion  between  the  textile  companies  and  the  state  health  inspection 
teams:  Seventy-six  percent  of  the  hazards  found  by  federal  inspectors 
had  not  been  found  by  the  North  Carolina  inspectors  who  visited  the 
same  plants  and,  further,  "Administrators  at  the  highest  levels  of  the 
North  Carolina  Department  of  Labor  have  obstructed  proper  enforce- 
ment of  the  state's  laws  governing  cotton-dust  exposure."84  Exact  statis- 

213 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

tics  on  how  many  cotton  mill  workers  have  died  from  byssinosis  are 
unavailable.  But  none  have  been  compensated.  No  state  or  company 
plan  exists  for  reimbursement  of  medical  costs  incurred  from  the  disease. 

In  England,  under  pressure  from  the  textile  unions  there,  byssinosis 
has  been  compensable  since  the  beginning  of  World  War  II.  In  the  United 
States,  though,  textile  owners  argued  that  there  was  no  such  disease,  that 
the  workers  only  had  severe  bronchitis  or  asthma  or  smoker's  cough. 
"We  are  particularly  intrigued  by  the  term  'byssinosis,'1 "  editorialized  the 
trade  magazine,  A merica 's  Textile  Reporter,  in  1969,  "a  thing  thought  up 
by  venal  doctors  who  attended  last  year's  ILO  [International  Labor 
Organization]  meetings  in  Africa,  where  inferior  races  are  bound  to  be 
afflicted  by  new  diseases  more  superior  people  defeated  years  ago."85 
Exposures  by  the  textile  unions  and  Ralph  Nader  raised  the  issue  in  the 
discussion  preceding  passage  of  the  1970  federal  Occupational  Safety  and 
Health  Act. 

Tests  on  Atlanta  Federal  Penitentiary  inmates  working  in  a  textile 
plant  proved  the  existence  of  the  disease  to  the  resistant  textile  owners, 
who  now  claim  to  test  their  employees  for  byssinosis.  Burlington, 
Cannon  and  Cone  mills  all  work  with  Duke  University  Medical  Center  to 
treat  the  more  obvious  victims.  But  estimates  for  the  number  of  afflicted 
North  Carolina  workers  run  as  high  as  70,000  and  only  38  individuals 
applied  for  compensation  between  July  1971  and  1973.*6  The  North 
Carolina  Workmen's  Compensation  Act  places  on  the  victim  the  burden 
of  proving  one's  byssinosis.  Most  doctors,  ignorant  of  the  disease  which 
was  not  recognized  until  recently,  diagnose  it  as  emphysema.  But  not  one 
industry  spokesman  has  yet  been  heard  to  suggest  that  money  be  spent  on 
steaming  and  washing  the  cotton  before  it  goes  through  the  carding 
process  to  keep  the  air  in  the  mills  free  of  dust  particles.  And  the  textile 
union  is  neither  strong  enough  nor  bold  enough  to  mount  a  campaign  to 
compel  the  industry  to  eliminate  the  causes  of  brown  lung. 

U  ntil  recently  the  textile  union  had  pursued  a  strategy  of  organizing  on 
a  plant  by  plant  basis,  relying  in  large  part  on  the  National  Labor 
Relations  Board  to  rule  in  its  favor  on  unfair  labor  practice  charges.  But 
the  NLRB,  made  up  of  political  appointees,  is  generally  used  by  the 
textile  industry  to  its  own  advantage.  Difficult  as  it  is  to  get  the  NLRB  to 
call  an  election  on  union  recognition,  it  is  harder  still  to  win  such  an 
election,  not  to  mention  winning  a  contract  later.  If  the  union  collects 
enough  workers'  signature  cards  to  hold  an  election,  the  company  in 
question  will  fire  key  workers.  If  the  union  protests  the  dismissals  to  the 
NLRB,  the  company  can  usually  count  on  a  friendly  hearing.  When  it 
cannot,  it  will  appeal  the  NLRB  ruling  through  the  courts,  tying  up  the 
case  for  years  and  destroying  the  union  campaign  by  attrition. 

214 


Five 

However,  in  this  state  where  one  can  be  imprisoned  for  overworking  a 
mule  but  not  for  overworking  a  textile  worker,  a  change  is  on  the  agenda. 
Its  first  signs  were  seen  in  1974,  with  the  victorious  12-year  campaign  to 
unionize  the  3,400  workers  at  the  7  J. P.  Stevens  mills  in  Roanoke 
Rapids.  None  of  the  Stevens'  46,000  workers  in  89  plants  have  ever  been 
covered  by  a  union-negotiated  wage  agreement.  Stevens,  second  only  to 
Burlington  as  the  biggest  textile  company  in  the  capitalist  world,  is  a 
skilled  practitioner  of  intimidation,  blacklisting,  paternalism  and  vio- 
lence against  union  efforts.  Company  agents  in  other  plants  have  been 
charged  with  illegally  wiretapping  union  organizers.  The  NLRB  has 
ordered  Stevens  to  pay  back  wages  and  damages  amounting  to  about 
$1.3  million  to  289  workers  who  had  been  illegally  fired  in  the  course  of 
the  organizing  drive  in  the  past  dozen  years. 

The  town  of  Roanoke  Rapids  was  founded  as  a  mill  village  at  the  turn 
of  the  century  by  a  former  Confederate  Army  officer,  Major  Leyburn 
Emry,  who  served  as  its  first  mayor.  Emry  owned  the  local  power 
company,  the  mill  of  course,  all  the  land  in  the  town  and  the  houses  on 
that  land,  and  all  the  forest  around  the  town.  He  built  Roanoke  Rapids' 
first  streets  and  first  buildings,  opened  its  only  saloon  and  gave  the  land 
for  its  first  church.  Nearly  800  tenant  houses  were  built  on  Emry's 
property,  in  which  the  mill  workers  lived.  Emry  later  hired  Sam  Patter- 
son to  serve  as  his  foreman  and  manager.  Patterson  eventually  set  up 
another  mill  as  a  joint  venture  with  Emry,  and  as  the  major  reached  his 
seniority,  Patterson  became  the  town's  landlord,  merchant,  mayor, 
school  principal,  police  chief  and  political  boss  and  patron.  Folks  who 
lived  in  Roanoke  Rapids  worked  in  the  Emry-Patterson  mills,  lived  in 
the  Emry-Patterson  houses,  shopped  at  the  Emry-Patterson  stores, 
bought  the  Emry-Patterson  produce,  studied  at  the  Emry-Patterson 
schools. 

Eventually  Patterson  sold  the  town  to  his  own  lieutenant,  Frank 
Williams,  who  eventually  sold  the  by-then  6  mills  to  the  Simmons 
Mattress  Company,  which  in  turn  sold  the  mills  to  J. P.  Stevens  in  1956. 
But  there  remained  the  continuum  of  Roanoke  Rapids  as  a  company 
town,  with  all  of  its  oligarchical  structure.  The  parents  of  today's  J. P. 
Stevens  millhands  worked  for  Frank  Williams,  and  their  parents  worked 
for  Sam  Patterson.87 

The  union  victory  at  Roanoke  Rapids  has  by  no  means  guaranteed  a 
contract.  Since  1974,  the  union  has  been  bargaining  for  the  contract  to  no 
avail,  which  has  prompted  the  AFL-CIO  to  support  a  national  boycott  of 
Stevens  products.  (At  another  textile  giant,  Deering-Milliken,  the  union 
is  still  engaged  in  more  than  a  20-year-long  legal  struggle  after  winning  an 

215 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

election  in  1956.)  Despite  record-breaking  profits — for  the  fiscal  half- 
year  ending  May  1,  1976,  net  sales  were  $679.2  million,  up  40.5  percent 
from  the  previous  year88 — Stevens  refused  to  make  a  single  economic 
improvement  for  its  workers.  The  33  officers  and  directors  of  the 
corporation  receive  an  average  of  $100,000  each  in  direct  payments  from 
the  company,  plus  profits,  depending  on  the  amount  of  stock  they  own. 
Board  chairman  James  Finley  made  $462,000  in  1975,  president  Whitney 
Stevens,  $325,000.  Pensions  for  the  Stevens  chieftans  come  to  as  much  as 
$75,000  a  year.  But  the  millhands  face  a  different  fate.  Under  Stevens* 
"profit-sharing"  plan,  a  worker  of  36  years'  experience  may  receive  a 
lumpsum  of  $1,200  and  a  deadly  case  of  byssinosis  upon  retirement.  For 
the  years  1970,  1971  and  1972,  not  one  penny  of  "profit-sharing"  pay- 
ments was  given  to  the  workers. 

Clearly  Stevens  prefers  to  defy  the  law  rather  than  enter  seriously  into 
contract  negotiations  with  the  union.  The  $1.3  million  the  company  has 
paid  out  in  fines  for  its  violations  of  the  law  since  1968  is  nothing 
compared  to  the  $104  million  in  government  contracts  it  has  received  in 
the  same  years.  Daniel  Pollitt,  who  served  as  counsel  for  the  Special 
House  Subcommittee  on  Labor  in  Washington,  said  that  Stevens  and 
other  southern  textile  companies  laughingly  refer  to  back-pay  awards  as 
the  "hunting  license"  they  need  to  continue  their  union-busting  ac- 
tivities.89 Thus,  Stevens  has  become  the  number  one  labor  law  violator  in 
the  United  States.  As  of  March  15, 1976, 94  cases  of  labor  law  violations 
by  Stevens  were  pending  before  the  National  Labor  Relations  Board. 
The  NLRB  has  found  Stevens  guilty  of  flagrant  and  massive  violations  15 
times  since  1964.  Appeals  by  Stevens  of  these  NLRB  rulings  have  been 
rejected  8  times  by  the  U.S.  Cicruit  Court  and  3  times  by  the  U.S. 
Supreme  Court,  which  are  not  known  for  a  pro-labor  bias. 

An  August  1977  ruling  by  the  Second  Circuit  U.S.  Court  of  Appeals 
found  the  company  in  contempt  of  court  "not  once  but  twice,  involving 
over  30  individual  violations,"  which  "have  been  described  as  massive, 
cynical  and  flagrantly  contemptuous."  The  court  said  it  would  consider  a 
proposed  fine  of  $120,000  for  any  future  violation  and  an  additional 
$5,000  fine  for  each  day  that  a  violation  continued.90  Four  months  later 
an  NLRB  judge  again  found  that  the  company  failed  to  bargain  in  good 
faith  in  the  Roanoke  Rapids  negotiations.  Judge  Bernars  Ried  said  that 
Stevens'  record  "as  a  whole  indicates  that  it  approached  these  negotia- 
tions with  all  the  tractability  and  open-mindedness  of  Sherman  at  the 
outskirts  of  Atlanta."91 

The  1974  vote  for  the  union  by  the  Roanoke  Rapids  workers  brought 
out  the  power  of  the  company  in  North  Carolina.  Banks  and  finance 

216 


Five 

companies  reminded  the  millhands  of  their  debts.  New  loans  were 
refused  until  after  the  election.  Stevens  foremen,  acting  as  deacons  and 
ministers,  preached  against  the  unions  in  the  local  churches.  Even  Boyd 
Leedom,  NLRB  chairman  under  President  Eisenhower,  described  Ste- 
vens as  "so  out  of  tune  with  a  humane  civilized  approach  to  industrial 
relations  that  it  should  shock  even  those  least  sensitive  to  honor,  justice 
and  decent  treatment."92 

The  fabric  of  social  relations,  specifically  Black-white  relations,  in  the 
area  may  be  changed  as  the  Stevens  dispute  is  resolved,  particularly  as 
the  17-year-long  effort  to  organize  becomes  still  more  protracted.  Ever 
since  the  1929  defeat  of  the  NTWU  at  Gastonia,  in  part  through  the  use  of 
racism  to  combat  the  union's  principled  defense  of  racial  equality,  the 
textile  unions  tried  to  avoid  the  racial  issue.  With  the  influx  of  Black 
workers  into  the  industry  since  the  1960s — due  to  pressures  by  the  civil 
rights  movement,  and  to  the  labor  shortage  as  whites  moved  to  more 
skilled  jobs  in  the  new  industries  coming  South — textile  union  organizers 
have  had  to  meet  the  issue  of  racism. 

In  1950,  Blacks  did  not  comprise  more  than  10  percent  of  any  textile 
mill's  workforce  in  North  Carolina.  Black  women  were  totally  excluded, 
except  occasionally  as  scrubwomen.  No  Black  occupied  jobs  in  the  more 
preferable  weaving  and  spinning  departments,  let  alone  white-collar  jobs 
or  supervisory  positions.  But  by  1968  Black  men  constituted  15.9  percent 
of  North  Carolina's  textile  workforce,  Black  women,  9.7  percent.  Still 
only  66  Blacks  occupied  white-collar  jobs  in  the  entire  industry,  the 
state's  largest.  Of  these,  3  were  managers,  3  were  professionals,  7  were 
technicians  and  53  were  office  or  clerical  workers.93  In  June  1976,  J, P. 
Stevens  was  found  guilty  of  gross  discriminatory  acts  in  its  Roanoke 
Rapids  plants  by  a  federal  district  court.  Among  the  court's  findings  were 
the  exclusion  of  Black  workers  from  clerical  supervisory  and  skilled  jobs. 
Black  male  workers  with  12th-grade  educations  made  less  than  white 
males  with  3rd-grade  educations;  Blacks  with  10  years'  seniority  made 
less  than  whites  with  two  years.94  At  its  plants  in  Roanoke  Rapids  during 
the  union  election  campaign,  the  company  posted  on  its  walls  pictures  of 
huge  Black  men  crouching  over  frail  white  women,  and  passed  out 
photos  of  white  murder  victims  in  San  Francisco's  so-called  Zebra  terror 
campaign.95 

State  AFL-CIO  president  Wilbur  Hobby,  who  personally  interceded 
in  the  Stevens  organizing  drive,  says  that  "whites  leave  the  textile 
industry  because  the  pay  is  so  low  and  they  can  get  more  in  the  new 
industries  coming  here."  This  helps  the  unions  because  "Black  people  are 
more  prone  to  organization,  they're  not  so  fooled  by  the  myths  of 

217 


Nothing  Could  Be  Finer 

individualism/"  But  there  is  a  problem  because  "when  a  union  moves  in, 
and  calls  a  first  meeting,  mainly  Black  workers  show  up,  and  then  the 
company  goes  to  the  white  workers  and  says,  'You  all  don't  want  to  join  a 
union  dominated  by  them."'96  The  Stevens  campaign  proved  successful, 
because  the  organizing  committee  was  made  up  of  Black  and  white 
workers,  operating  on  the  basis  of  equality.  At  first  whites  stayed  away 
from  union  meetings,  victimized  by  a  company  campaign  showing  that 
the  union  supported  school  desegregation.  The  union's  Scott  Hoyman 
says  that  young  whites  as  well  as  Blacks  now  "feel  no  obligation  to  the 
company.  The  companies  race-bait  and  tell  the  whites  that  they  will  be 
run  by  Black  union  bosses,  while  at  the  same  time  the  company  is 
beginning  to  upgrade  some  Blacks  to  foreman.  With  the  entrance  of  new 
industries — rubber,  paper,  etc. — the  textile  companies  feel  the  pressure 
for  more  wages,  benefits  and  rights.  If  a  tire  company  pays  $1.50  an  hour 
more  than  a  mill,  the  textile  company  will  be  pressured  by  whites  as  well 
as  Blacks."97 

The  class  interests  of  white  workers  mitigate  in  favor  of  unity  with 
Black  workers  when  they  are  clearly  seen.  Thus  the  civil  rights  and  Black 
liberation  movements  serve  white  workers  as  well.  The  corporations,  by 
their  nature  undemocratic  institutions  with  all  decisions  made  by  a  few 
owners,  are  restricted  in  their  total  control  by  any  extension  of  demo- 
cratic rights,  including  those  that  take  place  outside  the  plant  gate.  The 
companies  understand  this  sometimes  better  than  the  unions.  Thus  the 
corporations,  and  the  state  apparatus  under  their  control,  have  moved  to 
neutralize  and  eliminate  any  suggestion  of  a  civil  rights  movement  as  a 
threat  to  their  economic  dictatorship. 


218 


Afterword 


In  a  Christmas  season  statement  in  late  1973,  the  North  Carolina 
Advisory  Committee  to  the  United  States  Commission  on  Civil  Rights, 
under  the  chairmanship  of  Rev.  W.  W.  Finlator,  said  in  customary 
understatement: 

At  the  very  time  when  the  federal  government  is  meeting  with  reversal  after 
reversal  in  its  efforts,  across  the  nation,  to  harass  student  protesters  and  war 
resisters,  and  is  frustrated  by  juries  that  refuse  to  convict  on  what  seems  to 
them  trumped  up  charges,  here  in  North  Carolina  our  courts  are  meting  out 
harsh  penalties  and  giving  unconscionably  long  sentences  to  political  acti- 
vists. While  prosecution  has  failed  elsewhere  to  gain  verdicts  of  guilty,  the 
success  of  North  Carolina  prosecutors  in  jailing  socially  engaged  leaders  has 
been  both  remarkable  and  alarming. 

It  is  difficult  to  avoid  the  suspicion  that  the  administration  of  criminal 
justice  in  North  Carolina  could  become  politicized  in  its  pursuit  to  ferret  out, 
suppress  and  punish  political  belief  and  action.  Brilliant,  sensitive  and 
talented  young  men  such  as  Ben  Chavis,  an  ordained  minister  and  pastor  from 
a  home  of  culture  and  leadership,  James  Grant,  a  Ph.D.  in  chemistry  who  has 
been  offered  a  faculty  position  in  a  state  university,  and  T.  J.  Reddy,  a  poet 
and  painter  whose  works  are  soon  to  be  published  by  Random  House,  have 
been  arrested,  tried,  convicted  and  given  long  jail  sentences  under  circum- 
stances that  tend  to  revive  the  spectre  of  what  was  once  called  "southern 
justice."  The  harsh  and  seemingly  punitive  sentences,  the  excessive  bail,  the 
selection  of  juries,  and,  most  shocking  of  all,  the  use  by  the  State  of  discredited 
witnesses  who  have  themselves  been  charged  and  convicted  of  heinous  crimes 
and  have  then  been  given  immunity  and  protection  by  the  State,  have  the 
cumulative  effect  of  convincing  many  people  that  a  pattern  and  trend  of  legal 
repression  may  exist  in  North  Carolina. 

That  same  "cumulative  effect"  was  evident  on  July  4,  1974,  when  the 
National  Alliance  brought  nearly  10,000  people  to  Raleigh  to  protest 
against  that  "laboratory  of  racism  and  repression"  in  North  Carolina. 


Afterword 

More  than  half  the  protestors  in  the  demonstration,  the  largest  the  South 
had  ever  seen  since  the  murder  of  Dr.  King,  came  from  North  Carolina — 
from  the  cities,  the  small  towns,  the  countryside,  from  Charlotte  and 
Wilmington  and  Tarboro  and  Oxford  and  Fayetteville.  The  Rev.  Ralph 
David  Abernathy,  Dr.  King's  successor  as  president  of  the  Southern 
Christian  Leadership  Conference,  told  the  marchers:  "I've  come  to 
march  because  the  same  foot  of  iron  that  seeks  to  keep  me  down  as  a 
Black  man  is  seeking  to  keep  us  all  down,  whether  we  be  Christians  or 
Communists.  And  they  want  to  divide  us  and  they  want  to  tell  us 
something  is  wrong  with  some  people  because  they  are  Communists. 
Well,  I  want  to  tell  you  right  now  that  it's  a  pride  and  it's  an  honor  for  me 
to  march  with  Angela  Davis." 

Speaking  to  the  crowd,  Angela  Davis  agreed  with  Rev.  Abernathy: 
"They  said  people  would  not  take  to  the  streets  any  more,  to  raise  their 
voices  against  racism  and  repression.  Sisters  and  Brothers,  how  wrong 
they  were!  Look  around  you,  and  who  do  you  see?  You  see  Black  people 
by  the  thousands;  you  see  Puerto  Ricans,  Chicanos,  Indians,  Asians, 
white  people.  You  see  workers  and  students,  marching  together.  You  see 
ministers  and  Communists,  nationalists  and  church  people.  We've  learn- 
ed some  very  important  lessons  from  our  history.  We've  learned  that  if 
we  want  to  be  strong,  we  have  to  use  the  only  weapon  which  the  people 
who  are  politically  powerless,  and  economically  powerless,  hold  in  their 
hand.  Our  weapon  is  unity;  our  battle  is  to  organize." 

Under  pressure  from  many  quarters,  Governor  James  Holshouser 
announced  right  after  the  July  4  march  that  he  could  not  consider 
executive  clemency  for  the  Charlotte  Three  until  the  defendants  had 
exhausted  all  legal  avenues  of  redress.  The  governor  urged  the  defense  to 
appeal  through  the  state  courts.  Immediately  an  appeal  was  filed  and 
arguments  heard  by  Superior  Court  Judge  Sam  Ervin  III.  For  nine 
months  Judge  Ervin  held  onto  the  case  before  ruling,  in  December  1975, 
that  the  secret  federal  payoffs  to  the  informers  Hood  and  Washington, 
one  of  the  key  questions  in  the  appeal,  were  merely  "harmless  error." 
Immediately  the  defense  filed  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus  in  federal  district 
court  of  appeals,  and  the  appeals  process  dragged  on.  By  now  Jim  Grant 
had  been  paroled  by  the  federal  authorities,  after  serving  two  and  a  half 
years  at  Atlanta  Federal  Penitentiary  on  the  charge  of  aiding  fugitives, 
and  turned  over  to  the  state  of  North  Carolina,  where  he  was  assigned 
first  to  the  Avery  County  prison  unit,  then  to  Stanly  County  to  serve  his 
sentence  in  the  Lazy  B  case.  Finally  in  June  1976,  after  four  years 
imprisonment,  Jim  Grant  and  T.  J.  Reddy  were  released  on  $50,000  and 
$10,000  appeal  bond.  Charles  Parker  was  by  now  already  on  parole. 

220 


Afterword 

In  December  1974,  the  state  Court  of  Appeals  turned  down  the  appeal 
of  the  Wilmington  10.  In  the  appeal,  the  defense  listed  2,635  exceptions  to 
Judge  Martin's  "admitting  into  evidence  .  .  .  testimony  .  .  .  which  was 
irrelevant,  immaterial,  incompetent,  remote,  prejudicial  and  inflamma- 
tory." In  rejecting  the  appeal,  the  appellate  court  was  obliged  to  state 
that,  "In  our  opinion  some  of  the  rulings  constituted  error,"  but  nev- 
ertheless, "In  our  opinion  the  errors  in  the  admission  of  State's  evidence 
were  non-prejudicial  beyond  a  reasonable  doubt."  The  court  concluded 
its  decision  denying  the  appeal  with  these  words,  "In  our  view  defendants 
had  a  fair  trial  before  an  impartial,  patient  and  courteous  judge  and  by  a 
competent,  unbiased  jury.  They  have  been  accorded  every  reasonable 
request.  The  State's  evidence  was  clear,  and  overwhelmingly  tended  to 
show  the  guilt  of  each  defendant  of  the  offenses  with  which  he  was 
charged.  In  the  trial  we  find  no  prejudicial  error.  No  error."  What  the 
court  failed  to  note  in  its  opinion  was  that  the  "impartial,  patient  and 
courteous"  trial  judge,  Robert  Martin,  had  been  appointed  to  and  was 
now  sitting  as  a  member  of  the  Court  of  Appeals. 

Six  months  later  the  North  Carolina  Supreme  Court  refused  to  even 
review  the  case.  Among  those  sitting  on  that  court  were  I.  Beverly  Lake, 
Dan  K.  Moore,  and  Joseph  Branch,  for  years  political  cronies  of  Judge 
Robert  Martin  and  Attorney  General  Robert  Morgan,  who  had  pros- 
ecuted the  Wilmington  10.  This  left  the  U.S.  Supreme  Court  as  the  last 
resort.  In  October  1975  the  Wilmington  10  petitioned  the  highest  court  in 
the  land.  At  a  press  conference  called  by  the  Commission  for  Racial 
Justice  to  announce  the  petition,  National  Alliance  executive  secretary 
Charlene  Mitchell  argued,  "In  fact  the  case  of  the  Wilmington  10  should 
not  have  reached  the  U.S.  Supreme  Court  at  all.  It  should  never  have 
even  been  brought  to  trial.  The  wrong  people,  the  victims  rather  than  the 
perpetrators,  were  brought  to  trial.  Just  as  they  were  wrongly  tried,  they 
were  wrongly  convicted;  their  appeal  to  the  state  appellate  court  was 
wrongly  denied,  and  the  state  supreme  court  wrongly  refused  to  even 
hear  the  case." 

Then  in  January  1976  the  U.S.  Supreme  Court  "wrongly  refused"  to 
hear  the  case  as  well.  Nixon  appointee  and  Barry  Goldwater  confidant 
Judge  William  Rehnquist  read  the  case  for  the  high  court  and  recom- 
mended rejection  of  the  case  without  comment.  The  National  Con- 
ference of  Black  Churchmen,  under  the  presidency  of  Dr.  Charles  Cobb, 
stated  the  outrage  felt  by  the  legions  of  Wilmington  10  supporters.  "It  is 
hard  to  perceive,"  said  the  Conference,  "of  a  greater  inhumanity  than  this 
denial  of  the  writ  of  certiorari  imposes;  it  is  hard  to  perceive  of  a  greater 
abrogation  of  moral  and  judicial  responsibility." 

221 


Afterword 

The  Wilmington  10  now  had  to  prepare  to  return  to  prison.  During 
their  period  of  liberty,  they  had  remained  active  members  of  their 
communities.  Rev.  Chavis  continued  as  director  for  the  Washington, 
D.C.,  office  of  the  Commission  for  Racial  Justice  and  was  a  candidate 
for  a  master's  degree  in  divinity  at  the  Howard  University  School  of 
Religion.  Reginald  Epps  and  Wayne  Moore  were  now  juniors  at  Shaw 
University  in  Raleigh,  majoring  in  business  administration  and  political 
science,  respectively.  Joe  Wright  was  a  political  science  student  at 
Talladega  College  in  Alabama.  Jerry  Jacobs  married  a  school  teacher 
and  was  a  city  employee  in  Wilmington.  Ann  Sheppard  had  remarried 
and  was  now  working  in  Raleigh.  James  McCoy  was  an  electronics 
majorat  Cape  Fear  Technical  Institute  in  Wilmington.  Marvin  Patrick 
was  now  working  in  Oxford,  Willie  Earl  Vereen  in  San  Francisco,  and 
Connie  Tindall  in  Wilmington. 

Washington  Post  columnist  Coleman  McCarthy  asked,  "What  pur- 
pose is  served  by  locking  away  the  nine  young  men  and  one  woman  for  a 
combined  span  of  282  years?"  and  answered  himself:  "A  spirit  of  vicious 
retribution  appears  to  be  at  work.  None  of  the  Wilmington  10  had  a 
record  of  crime  before  his  arrest,  and  none  has  had  serious  involvement 
with  the  law  after.  None  jumped  bail.  Nothing  in  their  behavior  since 
their  arrests  in  1972  suggests  that  these  are  social  menaces  needing  to  be 
incarcerated  to  protect  the  community."  At  an  11th  hour  bond  hearing 
before  Magistrate  Logan  D.  Howell,  236  affidavits  were  filed  making 
that  same  point.  The  affidavits  testifying  to  the  good  character  and 
responsibility  of  the  Wilmington  10  and  asking  for  bond  to  be  set  while 
the  federal  appeals  process  continued,  came  from  professors,  attorneys, 
trade  union  leaders,  clergy,  city  council  members,  mayors,  judges  and 
members  of  Congress.  Support  for  the  Wilmington  10  had  come  already 
from  the  Washington,  D.C.,  City  Council  which  had  proclaimed  a 
"Wilmington  10  Day"  on  May  31,  1975,  from  the  Congressional  Black 
Caucus  and  from  the  Archdiocese  of  Hartford,  Connecticut,  from  the 
Baltimore  Central  Labor  Council  and  the  World  Peace  Council  based  in 
Helsinki,  Finland.  Among  the  scores  of  prominent  community  leaders 
who  appeared  in  person  to  offer  character  testimony  at  the  bond  hearing 
were  the  Rev.  William  Oliver,  chairman  of  the  Commission  for  Racial 
Justice;  the  Rev.  Ernest  Gibson,  executive  director  of  the  Council  of 
Churches  of  Greater  Washington;  Dr.  Lawrence  Jones,  dean  of  Howard 
University's  School  of  Religion;  and  the  Rev.  A.  Knighton  Stanley, 
director  of  Bicentennial  programs  for  the  Mayor  of  Washington,  D.C. 

Magistrate  Howell,  however,  refused  to  hear  the  testimony  or  read  the 
affidavits.  Receiving  a  fair  hearing  from  the  arcane  judicial  system  of 

222 


Afterword 

North  Carolina  where  justice  for  Ben  Chavis  and  the  Wilmington  10  are 
concerned,  was  as  easily  accomplished  as  freezing  smoke  rings.  Appeal 
bond  was  denied  and  the  ten  young  defendants  were  sent  to  prison  for 
most  of  the  remaining  years  of  their  lives. 


Ihirteen  months  after  the  Wilmington  10  were  again  placed  behind 
prison  walls  and  barbed  wire,  the  newly  inaugurated  President  Jimmy 
Carter  wrote  to  Andrei  D.  Sakharov  in  Moscow,  "You  may  rest  assured 
that  the  American  people  and  our  government  will  continue  our  firm 
commitment  to  promote  respect  for  human  rights.  We  shall  use  our  good 
offices  to  seek  the  release  of  prisoners  of  conscience."  The  White  House, 
the  new  president  was  saying  to  the  world,  would  no  longer  be  burdened 
by  the  corruption  of  Watergate  and  the  barbarism  of  Vietnam.  Human 
rights  were  to  be  the  hallmark  of  this  administration. 

Two  weeks  after  the  Carter  letter  to  Sakharov,  another  letter  on  the 
subject  of  human  rights  was  written,  this  time  to  President  Carter  from 
the  Rev.  Chavis.  Sent  from  his  prison  cell  in  McCain,  North  Carolina, 
Ben  wrote,  "As  only  one  of  the  many  American  citizens  who  has  been 
unjustly  imprisoned  not  because  of  criminal  conduct  but  as  a  direct  result 
of  participation  in  the  human  and  civil  rights  movement  in  the  United 
States,  I  appeal  to  you. . .  to  first  set  a  national  priority  of  freeing  all  U.S. 
political  prisoners.  .  .  .  We  are  10  victims  of  a  racist  and  political 
prosecution. . .  In  fact,  we  are  equally  as  well  'prisoners  of  conscience.*'  I 
pray  that  you  will  with  speed  respond  positively  to  my  request."  The 
young  minister's  prayers  and  his  letter  went  unanswered  by  a  White 
House  whose  public  relations  credo  holds  that  image,  not  substance,  is 
the  stuff  of  which  presidents  are  made. 

Spoken  in  tones  as  soft  as  the  slyest  innuendo,  President  Carter's 
human-rights  sermons  were  meant  to  give  the  impression  that  his 
government  had  cleansed  its  hands  of  the  blood  of  foreign  aggression  and 
the  grime  of  corruption  in  high  places.  His  Attorney  General,  Griffin  B. 
Bell,  who  had  20  years  earlier  been  the  architect  of  Georgia's  "massive 
resistance"  to  court-ordered  school  desegregation,  was  not  prepared  to 
be  quite  so  firm  with  high  government  officials  caught  in  criminal  acts. 
Early  on  in  the  young  administration,  Bell  accepted  the  recommendation 
of  his  department's  office  for  professional  responsibility  to  drop  consid- 
eration of  prosecuting  FBI  agents  on  criminal  charges. 

Nor  was  the  FBI  unique  in  exemption  from  "professional  respon- 
sibility." Take,  for  example,  Richard  Helms,  please.  As  Director  of 


223 


Afterword 

Central  Intelligence,  Helms'  career  included,  among  other  highlights,  his 
personal  involvement  in  assassination  attempts  against  Fidel  Castro; 
drug-testing  and  mind-control  programs  and  ordering  the  files  of  these 
programs  destroyed;  tens  of  thousands  of  illegal  mail  openings;  Opera- 
tion CHAOS  to  disrupt  democratic  movements  in  the  United  States  in 
violation  of  the  CIA  charter;  withholding  information  on  the  Watergate 
coverup  from  the  FBI  and  destroying  evidence  in  the  Watergate  case; 
subverting  and  eventually  overthrowing  the  democratically  elected  gov- 
ernment of  Salvador  Allende  in  Chile.  After  establishing  a  record  of  lying 
under  oath  to  congressional  committees  regarding  the  latter  three  crimes, 
Helms  was  charged  with  perjury. 

Enter  Messrs.  Carter's  and  Bell's  Justice  Department,  to  seemingly  act 
more  as  defense  counsel  than  prosecutor.  After  months  of  negotiations, 
felony  charges  of  perjury  against  Helms  were  reduced  to  the  misde- 
meanor of  refusing  to  testify  fully  and  accurately.  Even  the  misdemeanor 
charged  carried  a  possible  two-year  sentence  and  $2,000  fine,  however,  so 
Assistant  Attorney  General  Benjamin  Civiletti  urged  upon  the  judge  in 
the  case,  "with  all  the  strength  and  conviction  which  1  can  muster  on 
behalf  of  the  Attorney  General  and  the  Department  of  Justice,"  that 
there  be  no  jail  sentence.  Helms,  entering  his  nolo  contendre  plea,  stated 
his  understanding  that,  "There  is  to  be  no  sentence  and  I  will  be  able  to 
continue  to  get  my  pension  from  the  U.S.  government."  Let  off  with  a 
one-year  suspended  sentence  and  $2,000  fine,  his  attorney  told  the  press, 
"He's  going  to  wear  this  conviction  like  a  badge  of  honor."  Said  Helms, 
"I  don't  feel  disgraced  at  all."  From  the  courtroom  he  went  to  a  luncheon 
in  his  honor  by  former  colleagues  at  the  CIA,  who  gave  him  a  standing 
ovation  and  passed  around  a  wastebasket  to  collect  the  $2,000  he  had 
been  fined.  So  much  for  the  deterrent  effect  of  the  plea  bargain.  Attorney 
General  Bell,  defending  the  arrangement  a  few  days  later,  said  that  when 
his  department  urged  that  Helms  not  be  sent  to  prison  he  had  received  no 
special  consideration.  "You  can  rob  a  bank  and  get  probated,"  he  said, 
adding  that  it  was  common  for  "first  offenders"  not  to  go  to  jail.1 

This  was  hardly  a  persuasive  argument  to  supporters  of  the 
Wilmington  10  who  were  apparently  exempt  from  the  Bell  pronounce- 
ment. The  young  defendants,  scattered  throughout  the  Raleigh  Archi- 
pelago, some  to  prisons  hundreds  of  miles  from  their  families,  fought  for 
their  innocence  and  their  freedom  behind  the  walls  while  their  families 
and  supporters  took  to  the  streets  outside.  Several  of  the  Wilmington  10 
became  active  in  the  North  Carolina  Prisoners'  Union,  exposing  abuses 
of  inmates'  rights  by  the  authorities.  For  their  efforts,  they  were  placed  in 
isolation  or  moved  back  and  forth  from  this  prison  to  that,  like  so  many 

224 


Afterword 

leaves  in  a  wind.  After  a  brief  spell  at  Central  Prison  again,  Rev.  Chavis 
was  moved  to  Caledonia  prison  farm  in  the  rural  east.  Then  after  a  few 
weeks  and  as  punishment  for  reading  the  Bible  to  fellow  prisoners  and 
explaining  their  legal  rights,  he  was  put  in  leg  irons  and  chains,  placed  on 
the  back  of  a  prison  truck  and  transferred  200  miles  to  the  McCain  prison 
unit. 

For  "security"  reasons,  Ben  was  confined  to  a  hospital  section  for 
prisoners  with  tuberculosis  and  mental  disorders.  At  McCain  as  at 
Caledonia,  he  was  allowed  only  to  wear  the  gray  "gun"  uniform, 
signifying  that  were  he  to  attempt  to  escape,  he  would  be  shot  to  death  by 
prison  marksmen  using  double  barrel  12-gauge  shotguns  with  number  4 
buckshot.  When  various  appeals  and  grievance  hearings  brought  no 
relief,  Ben  embarked  on  a  "spiritual  fast  and  political  hunger  strike" 
which  lasted  131  days. 

Meantime  the  National  Alliance  was  distributing  a  half  million  pieces 
of  literature,  mobilizing  several  thousand  telegrams  and  letters  to  the 
governor,  organizing  delegations  to  the  attorney  general,  soliciting 
articles  in  national  magazines  and  arranging  network  television  docu- 
mentaries. In  preparation  for  its  National  March  for  Human  Rights  and 
Labor  Rights  in  Raleigh  on  Labor  Day  1976,  more  than  100,000  suppor- 
ters attended  Alliance  rallies  across  the  country,  while  personal  ap- 
pearances on  radio  and  television  by  Alliance  leaders  reached  many 
millions  more.  As  the  demonstrators  paraded  in  the  streets  of  Raleigh 
that  day,  support  actions  were  held  in  Jamaica,  the  USSR,  Iraq,  Greece, 
Denmark  and  the  German  Democratic  Republic,  the  result  of  a  call  for 
an  International  Day  of  Solidarity  with  the  Wilmington  10  and  Charlotte 
Three  by  the  World  Peace  Council  based  in  Helsinki,  the  International 
Association  of  Democratic  Lawyers  in  Brussels  and  the  Womens  Inter- 
national Democratic  Federation  in  Berlin.  In  the  next  year  and  a  half,  the 
White  House  in  Washington  and  the  statehouse  in  Raleigh  would  receive 
over  500,000  signatures  from  its  citizens  demanding  freedom  for  the 
Wilmington  10. 

By  the  time  Mr.  Carter  gave  his  inaugural  address,  he  had  already 
received  an  "Open  Letter"  from  James  Baldwin,  printed  first  in  The  New 
York  Times  and  then  carried  in  newspapers  from  Rome  to  Raleigh: 

I  have  a  thing  to  tell  you,  but  with  a  heavy  heart,  for  it  is  not  a  new  thing. . . 
If  I  know,  you  must  certainly  know  of  the  silent  pact  made  between  the  North 
and  the  South  after  Reconstruction,  the  purpose  of  which  was  — and  is — to 
keep  the  n[  ]r  in  his  place. 

If  I  know,  then  you  must  certainly  know,  that  keeping  the  n[  ]r  in  his 

place  was  the  most  extraordinarily  effective  way  of  keeping  the  poor  white  in 
his  place,  and  also  of  keeping  him  poor. 


225 


Afterword 

The  situation  of  the  Wilmington  10  and  the  Charlotte  3  is  a  matter  of 
Federal  collusion,  and  would  not  be  possible  without  that  collusion. 

When  those  Black  children  and  white  children  and  Black  men  and  white 
men  and  Black  women  and  white  women  were  marching  behind  Martin,  up 
and  down  those  dusty  roads,  trespassing,  trespassing  wherever  they  were,  in 
the  wrong  waiting  room,  at  the  wrong  coffee  counter,  in  the  wrong  depart- 
ment store,  in  the  wrong  toilet,  and  were  carried  off  to  jail,  they  found 
themselves  before  federally  appointed  judges,  who  gave  them  the  maximum 
sentence. 

Some  people  died  beneath  that  sentence,  some  went  mad,  some  girls  will 
never  become  pregnant  again.  .  .  . 

Too  many  of  us  are  in  jail,  my  friend,  too  many  of  us  can  find  no  door  open. 
And  I  was  in  Charlotte  20  years  ago,  three  years  after  the  Supreme  Court 
made  segregation  in  education  illegal,  when  it  was  decided  that  separate  could 
not,  by  definition  be  equal.  Charlotte  then  begged  for  time,  and  time,  indeed, 
has  passed.  .  .  . 

I  dared  to  write  you  this  letter  out  of  the  concrete  necessity  of  bringing  to 
your  attention  the  situations  of  the  Wilmington  10  and  the  Charlotte  3  .  .  . 
Their  situation  is  but  a  very  small  indication  of  the  situation  of  the  wretched  in 
the  country:  the  nonwhite,  the  Indian,  the  Puerto  Rican,  the  Mexican,  the 
Oriental.  Consider  that  we  may  all  have  learned,  by  now,  all  that  we  can  learn 
from  you  and  may  not  want  to  become  like  you.  At  this  hour  of  the  world's 
history  it  may  be  that  you,  now,  have  something  to  learn  from  us. 

The  Baldwin  letter  was  followed  by  a  "60  Minutes"  CBS-TV  documen- 
tary on  the  case,  a  letter  to  Attorney  General  Bell  from  sixty  members  of 
Congress,  support  declarations  from  the  N AACP,  Congressional  Black 
Caucus,  National  Urban  League,  National  Council  of  Churches,  Am- 
nesty International,  the  International  Federation  of  Human  Rights,  the 
World  Council  of  Churches,  resolutions  by  the  city  councils  of  Los 
Angeles,  Denver,  Honolulu,  Milwaukee,  Detroit,  Hartford  and  Madi- 
son, editorials  in  a  dozen  of  the  biggest  newspapers  in  the  country,  and 
demonstrations  in  front  of  federal  buildings  and  Democratic  Party 
headquarters  and  at  U.S.  embassies  abroad.  It  was  becoming  difficult  to 
take  at  face  value  the  president's  refusal  to  act  on  the  basis  of  not 
knowing  "all  the  facts"  in  the  case.  Before  his  first  year  in  office  would 
end,  he  would  be  told  by  Rep.  Parren  Mitchell,  chairman  of  the 
Congressional  Black  Caucus,  from  the  dais  of  the  Fourth  National 
Alliance  Conference:  "The  injustice  of  the  Wilmington  10  can  no  longer 
be  tolerated  by  a  nation  that  prattles  about  human  rights  .  .  .  You 
hypocrite,  you.  You  talk  about  human  rights  in  the  Union  of  Soviet 
Socialist  Republics.  Why  don't  you  start  with  the  human  rights  of  the 
Wilmington  10. 1  don't  fool  myself.  I,  Parren  Mitchell,  could  be  in  prison. 

226 


Afterword 

No  one  who's  Black,  Brown  or  poor  is  safe.  No  one  who  speaks  out 
against  the  Neutron  Bomb  is  safe.  It  is  not  just  brother  Ben  Chavis,  it  is 
us,  it  is  us." 


It  is  an  axiom  in  defense  work  that  the  earlier  one  enters  a  case,  the 
better  the  chances  for  victory.  Best  of  all  is  to  prevent  arrests,  but  if 
arrests  have  already  occurred  the  movement  can  work  to  block  indict- 
ments. Next  best  is  to  get  the  charges  dropped  and  avoid  a  trial,  and  after 
that,  to  win  at  the  trial  level.  If  a  trial  results  in  conviction,  the  best  the 
defense  can  hope  for  at  that  stage  is  reduced  or  suspended  sentences.  But 
it  is  generally  conceded  that  once  tried,  convicted,  sentenced  (especially 
to  long  terms),  and  serving  time,  a  defendant's  prospects  are  slim  at  best. 
Especially  is  this  so  if  your  name  is  Ben  Chavis  (or  Ann  Sheppard  or 
Willie  Earl  Vereen  or  Jerry  Jacobs  or  Reginald  Epps  or  Connie  Tindall 
or  Marvin  Patrick  or  Joe  Wright  or  Wayne  Moore  or  James  McKoy) 
and  the  entire  police  and  criminal  justice  apparatus  of  the  federal  and 
state  governments  is  aligned  against  you,  and  your  case  is  unknown 
outside  of  your  home  town,  and  the  general  assumption  of  those  who 
know  of  the  case  (including  some  who  are  supposed  to  be  your  friends)  is 
that  you  may  well  be  guilty  and  the  best  you  can  hope  for  is  mercy  from 
some  future  governor  or  court  some  years  down  the  road. 

Such  was  the  situation  when  the  National  Alliance  was  founded  and 
first  began  to  mount  a  movement.  Now  four  years  later,  this  case  of  poor, 
young,  unknown  civil  rights  workers,  already  convicted,  imprisoned  and 
given  up  as  lost  in  the  most  repressive  state  in  the  country,  had  broken 
wide  open.  Massive  pressure  from  throughout  North  Carolina  and  the 
U  nited  States  and  around  the  world  had  created  a  new  atmosphere  where 
false  witnesses,  once  intimidated,  now  felt  confident  enough  to  recant; 
and  true  witnesses,  once  too  frightened  to  testify,  now  came  forward  with 
the  truth;  where  those  who  in  earlier  times  opposed  or  averted  the 
campaign  now  initiated  actions  of  their  own. 

The  first  big  break  came  while  the  Alliance  was  mounting  the  Labor 
Day  march  in  1976,  when  Allen  Hall,  the  chief  prosecution  witness,  in  a 
sworn  affidavit,  recanted  his  trial  testimony.  Hall  now  said  that  he  had 
himself  set  the  fire  at  Mike's  Grocery  in  1971.  Facing  a  forty-year 
sentence,  Hall  had  agreed  to  prosecutor  Jay  Stroud's  terms  to  falsely 
implicate  Ben  Chavis  and  the  other  defendants  in  exchange  for  a  reduced 
sentence.  He  had  been  coached  in  his  testimony  by  Stroud,  U.S.  Treasury 
agent  William  Walden,  and  District  Attorney  Allen  W.  Cobb.  The  flavor 
of  the  case  can  be  tasted  by  selections  from  Hall's  recantation; 


227 


Afterword 

hall:  And  so  then  like  they  told  me  what  to  say  in  Court  because  I  had 
gotten  mad  and  I  had  said  that  for  them  to  just  give  me  a  gun,  that  1  would  kill 
Chavis,  you  know.  And  so  Stroud  said,  no,  uh,  you  couldn't  kill  him  because  if 
you  kill  him  they  would  investigate  because  he  is  in  a  civil  rights  movement 
and  so  then  they  said  that  the  best  way  to  get  him  is  through  by  law.  He  said, 
because  law  has  so  many  quirks  and  turns  in  it  and  so  like,  I  went  along  with 
that.  So  like,  then  after  they  had  told  me  how  to  make  Molotov  cocktails  and 
they  had  showed  me  what  dynamite  was,  you  know,  and  blasting  caps. 

attorney  james  Ferguson:  Did  you  know  anything  about  Molotov 
cocktails  and  dynamite  before  they  told  you  about  them? 

hall:  No,  because  1  had  never  been  involved  in  nothing  like  that  before. 

Ferguson:  You  hadn't  seen  Chavis  or  any  of  the  other  people  who  were  on 
trial  making  any  Molotov  cocktails  or  bring  dynamite  into  the  church  or 
anything  like  that? 

hall:  No. 

Ferguson:  O.k.,  go  ahead  and  tell  us  what  else  happened. 

hall:  And,  ah,  then,  like  ah,  Mr.  Walden,  Bill  Walden,  he  said  that  here 
goes  some  dynamite  and  some  blasting  caps  and  he  said  it  was  electro- 
dynamite.  He  said  that  he  had  found  this  in  the  basement  of  the  church.  And 
ah,  he  asked  me  had  I  seen  it  and  I  said,  no  I  hadn't  seen  no  dynamite  in  the 
basement  of  no  church.  And  so,  like,  he  said,  no,  you  don't  say  that  there 
because  you  lookin  at  the  dynamite  now,  right.  I  said,  yeah.  He  said,  well  then, 
that's  the  dynamite  that  came  out  from  under  the  church.  You  supposed  to  say 
that  you  saw  the  dynamite  in  the  basement  of  the  church.  And  so,  1  said,  well 
o.k.  then.  .  .  . 

Ferguson:  Where  was  Ben  when  Mike's  Grocery  was  burned? 

hall:  In  Reverend  Templeton's  house  because,  like  ah,  to  the  best  of  my 
knowledge,  Ben  didn't  know  nothing  about  it  because  half  of  the  time,  like  ah, 
whenever  the  gas  was  there,  half  of  the  time,  you  know,  Ben  didn't  even  know 
it  because  they  kept  it  hid. 

Ferguson:  O.k.  So  are  you  saying  then  that  Ben  didn't  tell  anybody  to  burn 
down  Mike's  Grocery  Store? 

hall:  No. 

Ferguson:  And  he  wasn't  out  there  when  Mike's  Grocery  was  being 
burned? 

hall:  No,  he  wasn't  out  there  when  it  was  being  burned.  .  .  . 

Ferguson:  Were  you  promised  anything  by  any  of  the  officers  such  as  the 
Solicitor  or  police  officers  for  testifying  against  the  defendants  at  the  trial? 

hall:  1  was  promised  by  all  of  them  that  I  wouldn't  get  much  time,  and  that 
I  would  be  out  in  six  months  if  1  didn't  get  into  anything. 

A  court  hearing  some  months  later  revealed  that  during  the  trial  Hall 
was  housed  at  a  beach  resort  with  his  girlfriend,  whom  Solicitor  Stroud 
had  brought  from  Asheville,  300  miles  away. 


228 


Afterword 

Also  housed  with  Hall  was  Jerome  Mitchell,  the  second  main  witness 
against  the  Wilmington  10.  As  far  back  as  June  10,  1974,  while  the  case 
was  still  on  appeal  in  the  state  courts,  Mitchell  had  written  the  parole 
board: . .  Back  in  September  1972, 1  testified  for  the  state  in  the  Chavis 
case.  Which  I  can  no  longer  go  on  with  myself  about.  Because  of  the  fact 

that  I  committed  perjure  [sic]  against  every  person  in  that  case  I  don't 

care  what  anyone  else  do.  But  I  feel  I  was  wrong.  1  want  to  do  all  1  can  to 

get  this  right.  I  am  praying  they  can  be  free  or  get  a  new  trial  Please  as 

soon  as  possible  let  me  hear  from  you.  I  have  done  wrong  enough.  Please 
let  me  have  my  chance  to  help  free  those  I  lied  on.  Thank  you."  For  three 
years,  Mitchell's  letter  was  suppressed  by  the  state.  Then  in  March  1977, 
after  Hall's  recantation  was  made  public,  Mitchell  also  made  a  public 
statement.  Facing  unrelated  first-degree  murder  charges  and  a  possible 
death  sentence  at  the  time  of  the  Wilmington  10  trial,  Mitchell  had  agreed 
to  offer  false  testimony  against  the  defendants  in  exchange  for  a  promise 
of  a  six-month  sentence.  (Mitchell  was  eventually  convicted  of  second- 
degree  murder  but  served  less  than  four  years  of  his  30-year  sentence 
before  being  paroled  to  a  $3-an-hour  laborer's  job.  After  his  recantation, 
he  was  arrested  again,  charged  with  trying  to  pass  off  a  $10  bill  as  a  $100 
bill.)  Like  Hall,  he  would  be  coached  in  his  testimony  by  Solicitor 
Stroud,  Treasury  agent  Walden,  and  Wilmington  police  officers: 

After  staying  at  Wrightsville  Beach  for  approximately  a  week  or  two,  Allen 
and  I  were  moved  to  a  beach  house  on  Carolina  Beach.  1  believe  it  was  an 
eight-room  house.  A  man  named  "Tex"  came  one  night  and  talked  to  us  for  a 
long  time.  He  said  he  was  in  the  Ku  Klux  Klan  and  he  knew  a  lot  of  people  and 
if  we  needed  protection  or  financial  aid  he  would  assist.  Most  of  this  had 
already  been  brought  out  by  Stroud.  We  stayed  at  the  cottage  until  the  trial 
was  over.  [Tex  Gross,  Grand  Cyclops  of  the  Knights  of  the  Ku  Klux  Klan  in 
eastern  North  Carolina,  owned  the  beach  cottage  in  which  the  prosecution 
housed  Mitchell  and  Hall.  Author.] 

After  1  testified  Stroud  said  I  did  a  good  job  and  if  he  got  a  conviction  he 
was  going  to  throw  a  party.  After  the  trial  we  had  a  party  at  the  cottage.  We 
grilled  steaks  and  drank  whisky.  .  .  . 

To  learn  the  testimony  I  studied  the  material  Jay  Stroud  give  me  daily  for 
approximately  a  month.  That's  all  we  had  to  do  during  the  week.  As  time  went 
on  1  kept  reminding  Stroud  about  his  promise  and  he  kept  assuring  me  he 
would  have  me  out  in  six  or  seven  months  if  1  testified.  .  .  . 

During  the  trial  of  the  Wilmington  Ten  almost  all  my  testimony  was  false.  I 
told  the  truth  about  my  name  and  some  of  my  past,  but  all  the  details  1  gave 
about  Chavis  and  the  other  defendants  was  false.  I  was  not  there  at  the  church 
those  nights  and  I  did  not  participate  in  the  burning  of  Mike's  Grocery  nor  do 
I  personally  know  who  did.  I  testified  to  these  matters  only  because  Jay 


229 


Afterword 

Stroud  promised  me  that  I  would  get  out  of  prison  in  six  or  seven  months  if  I 
did.  Jay  Stroud  prepared  the  statements  for  me  because  I  didn't  know 
anything  about  the  burning  of  Mike's  Grocery.  That  was  the  only  way  1  could 
learn  the  details.  That  is,  I  had  to  study  what  was  given  to  me  because  I  didn't 
know  anything  about  it.  I  never  saw  any  fire-bombs  or  anyone  making  them 
nor  did  1  ever  see  any  of  the  Wilmington  Ten  with  guns. 

I  am  giving  this  statement  to  be  of  all  truths  to  the  best  of  my  knowledge 
and  beliefs,  it  is  the  truth  so  help  me  God. 

Hall's  and  Mitchell's  recantations  brought  forth  yet  another  from  Eric 
Junious,  the  third  and  lone  remaining  state's  witness  against  the 
Wilmington  10.  At  the  time  of  trial,  Junious  was  a  thirteen-year-old 
juvenile  who  was  confined  to  a  training  school  for  having  committed 
armed  robbery  at  the  age  of  eleven.  In  a  sworn,  notarized  statement  in 
January  1977,  Junious  said  that  he  too  was  coached  by  Stroud,  given  a  set 
of  photographs  of  the  Wilmington  10  and  a  list  of  their  names,  and 
trained  to  match  up  the  two.  In  exchange  for  his  testimony,  the  youth  was 
promised  and  given  a  minibike  and  a  job  in  a  gas  station  owned  by 
Stroud's  cousin. 

By  now  Robert  Morgan,  who  as  attorney  general  had  overseen  the 
prosecution,  had  replaced  Sam  Ervin  in  the  United  States  Senate,  where 
he  joined  the  Intelligence  Oversight  Committee,  a  move  not  calculated  to 
make  human-rights  advocates  feel  too  comfy  when  the  doorbell  rings.  If 
politics  makes  strange  bedfellows,  think  of  the  possibilities  of  swapping: 
replacing  Morgan  as  attorney  general  was  Rufus  Edmisten,  Ervin's  chief 
aide  during  the  Watergate  hearings.  Apparently  the  buck  stopped  there, 
on  the  Potomac,  for  Edmisten,  who  now  became  chief  defender  of  the 
Wilmington  10  prosecution  and  conviction,  even  after  the  recantations. 

Nor  were  the  recantations  all  the  authorities  had  to  squirm  about.  Now 
it  was  revealed  that  North  Carolina's  Good  Neighbor  Council,  which  had 
been  responsible  for  inviting  Ben  to  Wilmington  and  worked  hand  in 
glove  with  him  there,  had  acted  in  collusion  with  the  prosecution  during 
the  trial.  In  late  1976  Good  Neighbor  Council  members  and  staff  revealed 
that  the  council  had  resisted  efforts  by  the  defense,  including  subpoenas, 
to  produce  at  the  trial  documents  and  records  that  indicated  the  inno- 
cence of  Ben  and  his  co-defendants.  One  council  field  worker  said:  "We 
were  concerned  about  maintaining  a  low  profile.  We  were  very  aware 
that  our  appropriations  came  from  the  General  Assembly."  So  they 
dodged  the  subpoenas,  pretty  much  sealing  the  fate  of  the  Wilmington  10. 
The  Rev.  Aaron  Johnson,  a  council  member,  now  told  the  press  in 
November  1976  that  those  records,  so  "highly  favorable"  to  the  defen- 
dants, had  been  stolen  from  the  council  office  in  Raleigh. 

230 


Afterword 

By  1977  Rev.  Eugene  Templeton  and  his  wife,  Donna,  who  had  fled  the 
Gregory  Congregational  Church  and  North  Carolina  in  fear  for  their 
lives,  felt  strong  enough  to  return  to  North  Carolina  to  give  the  testimony 
they  were  afraid  to  give  at  the  trial  five  years  earlier.  Now  they  told  a 
Superior  Court  hearing  that  Ben,  Marvin  Patrick,  Connie  Tindall  and 
James  McKoy  were  with  them  inside  their  home  in  Wilmington  at  the 
time  of  the  fire  at  Mike's  Grocery.  Others  came  forward  to  say  that 
Wayne  Moore  was  babysitting  at  the  time  of  the  fire,  that  Joe  Wright  was 
visiting  relatives. 

Moreover  Reverend  Templeton  would  now  defend  Ben's  presence  and 
activities  in  Wilmington  to  the  press.  Ben  united  the  community,  parents 
and  students,  said  Rev.  Templeton.  "Chavis  was  a  catalyst.  It  was  the 
first  time  I  saw  that  kind  of  interest  on  the  part  of  the  Black  parents.  He 
was  able  to  generate  genuine  interest,  genuine  concern  in  their  situation 
within  the  Wilmington  community.  For  the  very  first  time  I  saw  enthusi- 
asm and  hope  in  those  people.  They  believed  they  could  really  get  things 
improved.  I  thought  this  was  a  very  positive  thing,  and  I  told  the  deacons 
that.  Never  did  I  hear  any  talk  of  violence  from  Ben  Chavis  or  anyone 
else." 

With  the  only  three  witnesses  against  the  Wilmingtoin  10  recanting, 
and  defense  witnesses  coming  forward  to  say  that  the  defendants  were  in 
their  homes  at  the  time  of  the  alleged  crime,  even  one  of  the  original 
jurors  of  the  1972  trial,  Gretchen  Simmons,  could  tell  the  press  in  1977, 
"It's  obvious,  isn't  it,  that  the  case  is  completely  blown."  Still  the  state 
was  unrelenting.  At  a  post-conviction  hearing  in  May  1977,  forced  upon 
the  authorities  by  a  determined  outcry  of  public  opinion,  Superior  Court 
Judge  George  Fountain  listened  to  two  weeks  of  testimony,  including  the 
recantations  of  Hall,  Mitchell  and  Junious,  and  then  took  all  of  five 
minutes  to  rule  against  a  new  trial  in  a  decision  The  New  York  Times 
called  "breath-taking."  Subsequent  evidence  showed  that  Judge  Foun- 
tain's later  37-page  written  opinion  was  actually  produced  word  for  word 
by  the  state  attorney  general's  office  in  violation  of  federal  statutes. 

That  violation,  together  with  the  recantations  and  other  new  evidence 
produced  since  the  1972  conviction,  plus  the  original  defense  papers 
alleging  more  than  2,500  trial  errors,  formed  the  basis  of  several  appeals 
which  sat  in  Federal  District  Court  for  more  than  two  years  while  the 
Wilmington  10  sat  in  some  of  the  worst  prisons  in  the  country.  As  the 
courts,  acting  in  tandem  with  the  executive  offices  in  Raleigh  and 
Washington  refused  to  budge,  the  defense's  best  guess  was  that  they  were 
fearful  to  acknowledge  that  there  had  been  a  frame-up,  and  later  a  cover- 
up,  in  which  some  of  the  most  trusted  and  highly  placed  state  and  federal 

231 


Afterword 

officials  participated.  Careers  were  on  the  line  for  these  conspirators 

from  on  high. 

The  stubbornness  of  the  North  Carolina  authorities  in  refusing  to 
confess  error  and  wrongdoing  again  became  apparent  in  January  1978 
after  the  state  appellate  court  refused  to  reverse  Judge  Fountain's 
decision  in  the  post-conviction  hearing.  Governor  James  B.  Hunt,  under 
tremendous  pressure  as  a  result  of  the  recantations  and  the  mobilization 
of  public  opinion,  had  refused  to  deal  with  defense  appeals  for  pardons  of 
innocence  for  the  defendants  while  the  case  was  still  in  state  court.  Now 
with  the  appellate  court  decision,  the  legal  appeals  were  entirely  in  the 
hands  of  the  Federal  District  Court.  Governor  Hunt  announced  that  he 
would  make  a  statewide  television  address  to  announce  his  decision  on 
the  question  of  pardons,  a  decision  which  "would  end  this  matter  for  all 
time"  and  "put  this  case  behind  us."  Skeptics  believed  that  he  would  not 
grant  pardons— pressures  from  the  Right  and  from  powerful  forces  like 
Senator  Robert  Morgan  would  not  allow  that — but  that  he  would 
commute  the  sentences  to  "time  served,"  thereby  releasing  the  defendants 
from  prison  and  defusing  the  mass  movement.  Instead,  using  harsh 
prosecutorial  language,  Hunt  told  the  state  and  the  country  that  he 
believed  the  defendants  were  guilty  and  the  prosecutors  and  the  courts 
were  honorable;  that  the  sentences  on  one  count  were  not  consistent  with 
his  concept  of  the  law,  so  he  would  reduce  the  sentences  of  the 
Wilmington  10  from  a  maximum  of  282  years  to  221  years.  Predictably, 
what  had  been  a  storm  of  protest  before  Hunt  spoke  became  a  monsoon. 
Nearly  three  dozen  daily  newspapers  complained  in  bitter  editorials 
about  the  governor's  "Monday  Night  Massacre."  Most,  like  the  Kansas 
City  Star  and  the  Cleveland  Plain  Dealer,  were  heard  from  for  the  first 
time.  With  North  Carolina's  abdication,  all  pressure  now  would  be  on 
the  White  House. 

While  President  Carter  offered  his  State  of  the  Union  Address  in 
January  1978,  the  Wilmington  10  remained  in  prison.  Jim  Grant,  T.J. 
Reddy  and  Charles  Parker— the  Charlotte  Three— had  just  lost  their 
appeal  to  the  Fourth  U.S.  Circuit  Court  of  Appeals.  Al  Hood  and  David 
Washington,  whose  testimony  sent  Jim  and  the  Three  to  prison,  re- 
mained on  the  streets  to  pursue  their  lives  of  crimes.  Allen  Hall,  Jerome 
Mitchell  and  Eric  Junious  were  back  in  prison,  charged  with  various 
offenses.  Treasury  agents  Stanley  Noel  and  William  Walden  continued 
to  work  their  wares  in  North  Carolina.  Their  former  boss,  John  Con- 
nolly, had  been  acquitted  on  corruption  charges  a  couple  years  earlier. 
Richard  Nixon,  under  whom  the  prosecution  of  the  defendants  began, 
had  been  pardoned  of  all  his  crimes.  John  Mitchell  was  free  on  a  medical 

232 


Afterword 

furlough  from  a  sentence  of  3-8  years  for  his  Watergate  crimes.  His 
assistant,  Robert  Mardian,  had  his  conviction  reversed  in  the  same 
Watergate  conspiracy.  Solicitor  Jay  Stroud,  prosecutor  of  the 
Wilmington  10  and  Wilmington  Three,  was  named  U.S.  attorney  for 
eastern  North  Carolina,  in  one  of  Richard  Nixon's  final  acts  in  office, 
and  later  became  prosecutor  in  Gastonia.  Robert  Martin,  the  trial  judge, 
now  sits  on  the  North  Carolina  Court  of  Appeals.  Robert  Morgan 
remains  a  U.S.  senator. 

"Meanwhile,"  said  Congressman  Ronald  V.  Dellums  in  a  speech  to  the 
House  of  Representatives  while  the  U.S.  Supreme  Court  was  still 
considering  the  petition  of  the  Wilmington  10,  "the  Reverend  Chavis  is  a 
courageous  man,  as  he  has  shown  through  scores  of  arrests  and  attempts 
on  his  life . . .  The  authorities  will  try  to  break  him  and  he  will  not  break. 
The  consequences  of  prison  resistance  are  well  known  to  anyone  with 

eyes  to  read  the  daily  newspapers  I  think  it  is  important  for  Congress 

and  for  the  people  of  our  country  to  understand  that,  in  these  days  of 
investigation  into  the  misdeeds  of  the  intelligence  community,  real  lives 
are  at  stake.  The  provocations  against  and  persecution  of  the  Reverend 
Benjamin  Chavis  and  the  Wilmington  10  by  federal  and  local  agencies 
were  not  'simulated'  attacks;  they  were  not  assassination  plots  that  went 
awry  or  were  called  off  at  the  last  minute.  Rather,  they  were  calculated 
attempts  against  the  civil  rights  movement  of  North  Carolina,  with 
consequences  for  the  whole  United  States.  To  our  shame  they  were 
attempts  that  have  so  far  succeeded.  They  can  only  be  blunted  by  an  alert 
bar  of  public  opinion  and  a  Supreme  Court  intent  on  upholding  justice  in 
our  land." 

The  struggle  continues. 


233 


I 


Notes 


Introduction 

1.  Barbara  Howar.  Laughing  All  the  Way,  Fawcett  World,  Greenwich,  Conn.,  1974,  p. 
29. 

2.  See  Joy  Lamm,  "So  You  Want  a  Land  Use  Bill?";  and  James  Branscome  and  Peggy 
Matthews,  "Selling  the  Mountains,"  Southern  Exposure,  Fall  1974. 

3.  Author's  interviews  with  John  Coit,  April  29,  1974,  and  David  Flaherty,  April  17, 
1974. 

4.  North  Carolina  Department  of  Natural  and  Economic  Resources,  North  Carolina 
Histor viand,  Raleigh,  1974,  p.  19. 

5.  The  New  York  Times,  May  25,  1974. 

6.  North  Carolina  H.B.  1395,  Chapter  1207,  1963.  The  bill  was  amended  into  extinction 
in  1965. 

7.  Author's  interview,  June  10,  1974. 

8.  Bergen  County,  N.J.  Record,  January  22,  1975. 

9.  Raleigh  News  and  Observer,  February  20,  27,  1974. 
10.    The  New  York  Times,  November  17,  1974. 

One 

1.  V.O.  Key,  Southern  Politics,  Peter  Smith,  New  York,  1949,  p.  5. 

2.  Herbert  Aptheker,  The  American  Revolution,  1763-1783,  International  Publishers, 
New  York,  1960,  p.  220. 

3.  Herbert  Aptheker,  American  Negro  Slave  Revolts,  International  Publishers,  New 
York,  1943,  pp.  231  32. 

4.  Ibid.,  pp.  243  44. 

5.  Herbert  Aptheker,  To  Be  Free,  International  Publishers,  New  York,  1948,  pp.  18-19. 

6.  See  Herbert  Aptheker' s  One  Continual  Cry,  American  Institute  for  Marxist  Studies, 
New  York,  1965,  particularly  pp.  47-49. 

7.  Quoted  in  ibid.,  p.  12. 

8.  To  Be  Free,  op.  cit.,  pp.  144  45. 

9.  See  James  S.  Allen,  Reconstruction:  The  Battle  for  Democracy,  1865-1876,  Interna- 
tional Publishers,  New  York,  1963,  pp.  74-75. 

10.  Quoted  in  Herbert  Aptheker,  Afro-American  History:  The  Modern  Era,  Citadel 
Press,  New  York,  1971,  p.  20. 

1 1.  See  Allen  W.  Trelease,  White  Terror:  The  Ku  Klux  Klan  Conspiracy  and  Southern 
Reconstruction,  edited  by  Kenneth  B.  Clark,  Harper  &  Row,  New  York,  1971,  pp. 
189  225,  336  348;  and  Richard  L.  Zuber,  North  Carolina  During  Reconstruction, 
North  Carolina  Archives,  Raleigh,  1969. 

12.  Helen  G.  Edmonds,  The  Negro  and  Fusion  Politics  in  North  Carolina,  1894-1901, 
Russell  (1973  reprint  of  1951  ed.),  p.  210. 


Notes  pp.  19-45 

13.  C.  Vann  Woodward,  Origins  of  the  New  South,  1877-1913,  Louisiana  State  Univer- 
sity Press,  Baton  Rouge,  1971,  p.  195. 

14.  The  New  York  Times,  December  16,  1914,  quoted  in  Edmonds,  op.  cit., 
p.  143. 

1 5.  William  L.  Patterson,  ed.,  We  Charge  Genocide,  International  Publishers,  New  York, 
1970. 

16.  In  Barriers  to  Black  Political  Participation  in  North  Carolina,  Southern  Voter 
Educational  Project,  Atlanta,  1972,  the  author  William  A.  Towe  gives  the  following 
dramatic  figures:  Of  some  10,000  elected  to  fill  all  offices  in  North  Carolina  in  1970, 
only  10  were  Black.  In  197 1 , 63  of  more  than  2,000  mayors  and  councilmen  and  only 
82  of  4,000  elected  state  and  local  officials  were  Black  a  mere  two  percent.  By  1976, 
there  was  not  one  Black  mayor  in  North  Carolina;  only  three  Blacks  sat  in  the  170- 
member  General  Assembly;  a  half-dozen  were  among  the  468  county  commissioners; 
and  less  than  20  occupied  the  more  than  600  school  board  posts. 

Towe  also  points  up  the  fact  that  the  Voting  Rights  Act  of  1965  had  less  effect  in  North 
Carolina  on  Black  registration  than  in  most  southern  states.  By  1970,  North  Carolina 
was  at  the  bottom  of  the  ladder  in  sout  hern  Black  voter  registration. 

17.  Much  of  this  material  was  gathered  in  interviews  conducted  by  the  author  in  the 
Spring  of  1974.  Those  interviewed  include  then  Lieutenant  Governor  James  B.  Hunt, 
February  20;  then  Attorney  General  Robert  Morgan,  February  22;  Republican  state 
senate  leader  Charles  Taylor,  February  28:  Judges  I.  Beverly  Lake,  Joseph  Branch 
and  Dan  K.  Moore,  April  17;  then  Chapel  Hill  Mayor  Howard  Lee,  April  18;  the  late 
Governor  Luther  Hodges,  April  19;  former  Governor  Robert  Scott,  April  29;  former 
Governor  Terry  Sanford,  May  15;  then  Raleigh  Mayor  Clarence  Lightner,  May  20; 
U.S.  Senator  Jesse  Helms,  June  20. 

1 8    "The  Man  North  Carolina  Needs  for  Governor,"  1960  Lake  campaign  brochure. 

1 9.  The  News  and  Observer,  J  une  26, 1 964. 

20.  Key,  op.  cit.,  pp.  208-09. 

21.  Quoted  in  ibid. 

22.  Interview  with  Frank  Porter  Graham  by  Charles  Jones,  Anne  Queen  and  Stewart 
Wills,  Chapel  Hill,  June  9,  1961,  Southern  Oral  History  Program,  University  of 
North  Carolina. 

23.  Unpublished  conversation  with  Jonathan  Daniels  and  Mrs.  Kerr  Scott,  Chapel  Hill, 
June  10,  1962,  Southern  Oral  History  Program,  UNC. 

24.  Samuel  Lubell,  The  Future  of  American  Politics,  Harper  &  Row,  New  York,  1965, 
pp.  106-13. 

25.  Stephen  Klutzman,  Sam  J.  Ervin,  Jr.,  Grossman  Publishers,  Washington,  D.C., 
1972,  p.  2. 

26.  Paul  R.  Clancy,  Just  a  Country  Lawyer:  A  Biography  of  Senator  Sam  Ervin,  Indiana 
University  Press,  Bloomington,  1974,  p.  152. 

27.  "The  Watergate  Committee  Chairman's  New  Clothes,"  Southern  Voice,  March-April 
1974,  p.  8. 

28.  Klutzman,  op.  cit. 

29.  Los  Angeles  Times,  March  17,  1974. 

30.  Broy  hill's  political  career  is  charted  in  his  official  biography  by  a  son-in-law,  William 
Stevens,  Anvil  of  Adversity:  Biography  of  a  Furniture  Pioneer,  Grosset  &  Dunlap, 
New  York,  1968,  pp.  116-32. 

3 1 .  The  New  York  Times.  February  17,  1974. 

32.  "The  New  American  Majority,"  a  speech  to  the  Dean  Clarence  Manion  Testimonial 
Dinner,  May  15, 1974. 

33.  Speech  to  Daughters  of  the  American  Revolution,  April  16, 1974,  as  excerpted  in  The 
News  and  Observer,  April  28, 1974. 

34.  Author's  interview,  May  21, 1974. 

35.  William  H.  Towe,  op.  cit. 


236 


Notes  pp.  49-73 
Two 

1 .  Luther  Hodges,  Businessman  in  the  Statehouse,  University  of  North  Carolina  Press, 
Chapel  Hill,  1962. 

2.  Ibid.,  p.  83. 

3.  Ibid. 

4.  Ibid.,  pp.  84-100. 

5.  Raleigh  Times,  February  19,  1974. 

Years  after  the  busing  controversy  died  down  in  North  Carolina,  school  desegrega- 
tion remained  a  major  issue.  Under  orders  from  the  U.S.  Department  of  Health, 
Education  and  Welfare  to  desegregate  the  University  of  North  Carolina  system  by 
increasing  Black  enrollment  at  its  predominantly  white  institutions  by  150  percent, 
the  University's  Board  of  Governors  proposed  instead  a  plan  that  called  for  only  a  32 
percent  increase.  A  Black  member  of  the  board  resigned  over  the  plan,  a  second  Black 
member  cast  the  lone  dissenting  vote  against  it,  and  a  third  abstained  from  the  voting. 
HEW  later  rejected  the  university's  proposal  which  had  the  support  of  Governor 
James  B.  Hunt,  according  to  The  New  York  Times,  August  23,  1977. 

6.  Quoted  by  Ferrel  Guilory,  "Southern  Republicans:  Not  That  They  Hate  Watergate 
Less  But  They  Love  the  Southern  Strategy  More,"  Southern  Voices,  ioc.  cit.,  p.  13. 

7.  Hodges,  op.  cit.,  Chapter  10. 

8.  Ibid.,  p.  239. 

9.  Boyd  E.  Payton,  Scapegoat— Prejudice,  Politics,  Prison,  Whitmore,  Philadelphia, 
1970,  p.  31. 

10.  Ibid.,  pp.  51-52. 

11.  Ibid.,  p.  82. 

12.  Ibid.,  pp.  273-75. 

13.  Paul  M.  Gaston,  The  New  South  Creed:  A  Study  in  Southern  Mythmaking, 
Louisiana  State  University  Press,  Baton  Rouge,  1973,  p.  17. 

14.  "The  Development  of  Textiles,  Tobacco,  Furniture  Industries  in  North  Carolina,"  a 
paper  issued  by  Burlington  Industries,  Inc.,  circa  1974. 

15.  The  American  Tobacco  Story,  American  Tobacco  Co.,  Durham,  1964.  See  also  John 
Wilbur  Jenkins,  James  B.  Duke,  Master  Builder,  Reprint  Co.,  South  Carolina,  1971. 

16.  Quoted  in  Woodward,  op.  cit.,  p.  130. 

17.  Ibid.,  p.  137. 

18.  Quoted  in  ibid.,  p.  307. 

19.  Ibid.,  p.  422. 

20.  Aptheker,  Afro- American  History:  The  Modern  Era,  loc.  cit.,  p.  351. 

21.  Quoted  in  ibid.,  p.  20. 

22.  W.J.  Cash,  The  Mind  of  the  South,  Random  House,  New  York,  1941,  p.  173. 

23.  Ibid.,  pp.  125-26. 

24.  W.  McKee  Evans,  To  Die  Game:  The  Story  of  the  Lowry  Band,  Indian  Guerrillas  of 
Reconstruction,  Louisiana  State  University  Press,  Baton  Rouge,  1971,  pp.  3-4.  See 
also  Evans'  work.  Ballots  and  Fence  Rails:  Reconstruction  on  the  Lower  Cape  Fear, 
University  of  North  Carolina  Press,  Chapel  Hill,  1967. 

25.  For  the  most  complete  study  of  the  period,  see  Edmonds,  op.  cit. 

26.  Ibid.,  p.  10. 

27.  Ibid.,  p.  137. 

28.  Jack  Riley,  Carolina  Power  &  Light  Company,  1908-1958,  Carolina  Power  &  Light 
Company,  Raleigh,  1958,  pp.  276-78. 

29.  Woodward,  op.  cit.,  p.  330. 

30.  Edmonds,  op.  cit.,  chapters  6-9. 

31.  Ibid.,  p.  138. 

32.  Ibid.,  pp.  143-44. 

33.  Woodward,  op.  cit.,  p.  350. 

34.  Quoted  in  Edmonds,  op.  cit.,  p.  145. 


237 


Notes  pp.  74-117 


35.  November  17, 1898,  quoted  in  ibid.,  pp.  151, 153. 

36.  Quoted  in  ibid.,  p.  1 65. 

37.  Ibid.,  p.  168. 

38.  Quoted  in  Herbert  Aptheker,  ed..  Documentary  History  of  the  Segro  People  in  the 
United  States,  Vol.  2,  Citadel,  New  York,  1968,  pp.  813-15." 

39.  Interview  with  John  Coit,  op.  cit. 

40.  Author's  interview  with  General  John  Tolson,  state  Secretary  of  Military  and 
Veterans'  Affairs,  April  29, 1974. 

41.  Figures  for  military  personnel  and  expenditures  are  available  from  the  public 
information  offices  at  Fort  Bragg  and  Camp  Lejeune.  See  also  "Southern  Militar- 
ism." Southern  Exposure,  Spring  1973,  p.  82. 

42.  Letter  released  by  Camp  Lejeune  public  information  office.  Spring  1974. 

43.  Camp  Lejeune  74,  BP  Industries,  Midland,  Texas,  1973,  p.  56. 

44.  Author's  interview  with  Major  Harold  Owens,  public  relations  officer.  Camp  Le- 
jeune, February  23, 1974. 

45.  Ibid. 

46.  Fort  Bragg:  Reach  to  Serve  the  Nation,  BP  Industries,  Midland,  Texas,  1973.  p.  1 1 . 

47.  Ibid. 

48.  Helping  Hands  72.  BP  Industries,  Fort  Bragg,  1973.  p.  26.  All  references  on  Domestic 
Action  programs,  unless  otherwise  noted,  are  from  this  annual  report. 

49.  Interview,  op.  cit.  Unless  otherwise  indicated,  the  following  paragraphs  are  based  on 
this  conversation  and  official  materials  released  by  the  DM  V  A. 

50.  Authors  interview  with  District  Judge  John  Walker,  February  22, 1974. 

51.  Raleigh  Times,  August  26,  1975.  See  also  Counterspy  magazine.  Winter  1976,  pp. 
45  59. 

Three 

1.  Reprinted  as  "Attorney  for  the  Defense,"  Esquire,  October  1973,  pp.  224-27. 

2.  The  Sew  York  Times.  November  6.  1973. 

3.  The  Sew  York  Times,  November  30,  1973. 

4.  The  Sew  York  Times,  October  15,  1973. 

5.  Daily  World,  June  8,  1974. 

6.  The  Sew  York  Times,  July  20,  1974. 

7.  Ibid. 

8.  The  Sew  York  Times,  July  13,  1974. 

9.  Quoted  by  Jessica  Mitford,  Kind  and  i  sual  Punishment,  Random  House,  New  York, 
1974,  p.  51. 

10.  Interview  with  the  author.  May  21,  1974. 

11.  James  Baldwin  "Fifth  Ave..  Uptown,"  Esquire,  October  1973. 

12.  "Charlotte  Report."  North  Carolina  Criminal  Justice  Task  Force  hearings,  July 
28-29,  1972,  p.  5. 

13.  Payton,  op.  cit.,  p.  305. 

14.  "Raleigh  Report."  North  Carolina  Criminal  Justice  Task  Force  hearings,  September 
9,  1972,  pp.  3-4. 

15.  "Charlotte  Report,"  loc.  cit. 

16.  Author's  interview  with  N.C.  Highway  Patrol  Commander  Colonel  Fdward  Jones, 
February  28,  1974. 

17  The  Sew  York  Times,  December  10,  1974. 

18  Interview,  op.  cit. 

19.  Charlotte  Observer,  March  II,  1976. 

20.  Raleigh  Times,  April  16,  1976. 

21.  Interview,  April  16,  1976. 

22.  Richmond,  Va.,  Times- Dispatch,  February  2,  1974. 

23.  Speech  by  Dunn  to  Brotherhood  of  Winterville,  N.C.  Baptist  Church,  April  10,  1974. 


238 


Notes  pp.  117-142 


24.  Interview,  op.  cit. 

25.  The  Sews  ami  Observer,  May  12, 1976. 

26.  See  David  M.  Rorvick,  "Bringing  the  War  Home,"  Playboy,  February  1974. 

27.  LEA  A  Fifth  Annual  Report,  Fiscal  Year  1973,  Washington,  D.C.,  1973. 

28.  Information  and  quotations  regarding  the  Durham  police  are  from  Mark  Pinsky, 
"State  ofSiege,  City  of  Siege,"  WIS,  June  19, 1975. 

29.  According  to  James  Donovan,  public  relations  spokesman  for  the  American  Textile 
Manufacturers  Institute,  in  1974  there  were  1 ,023,000  textile  workers  in  the  country, 
293,000  in  North  Carolina.  Interview  with  the  author,  April  23, 1975. 

30.  "The  Textile  Industry  and  Burlington's  Position  In  It,"  mimeographed  paper  issued  in 
1974  by  Burlington  Industries,  Inc.,  Greensboro. 

31.  \orth  Carolina  Report:  An  Objective  Study  of  a  Southern  State,  First  Union 
National  Bank  of  North  Carolina,  Charlotte,  revised  edition  1974,  pp.  38,  40,  42, 
55-56. 

32.  Author's  interview  with  Dick  Byrd,  assistant  director  of  public  relations  and  commu- 
nity relations  for  Burlington  Industries,  April  22, 1974. 

33.  "Giant  Burlington  Faces  Trying  Time  for  T  extiles,"  Business  Week,  March  2, 1974. 

34.  Author's  interview  with  Leo  Rossi,  J. P.  Stevens  public  relations  official,  June  10, 
1974. 

35.  "Cannon,"  a  brochure  issued  by  Cannon  Mills  in  1974.  Also,  author's  interview  with 
Cannon  Mills  vice-president  Edward  L.  Rankin,  Jr.,  April  25, 1974. 

36.  Cash,  op.  cit.,  p.  222. 

37.  Mary  Frances  Barnes,  "The  Richest  Man  Who  Ever  Lived  in  Charlotte,"  Charlotte, 
February,  1974. 

38.  Raleigh  Times,  February  28, 1974;  Charlotte  Observer,  March  11, 1976. 

39.  United  Mine  Workers  of  America  advertisement,  The  New  York  Times,  July  17, 
1974. 

40.  Transcript  of  testimony,  N.C.  Utilities  Commission,  Docket  E-7,  Sub.  159,  Vol.  7,  p. 
112.  See  the  brochure,  "Duke  Power:  the  un-friendly,  un-neighborly  power  com- 
pany!!" by  the  N.C.  Public  Interest  Research  Group,  Durham,  1974. 

41.  "Duke  Power,"  op.  cit. 

42.  The  \ew  York  Times,  May  5, 1974. 

43.  For  a  complete  examination  of  this  interlocking  corporate  control,  see  Southern 
Exposure,  Summer-Fall,  1973;  and  1973  annual  reports  for  Wachovia  Bank,  NCNB, 
Duke  Power,  C&  L,  Burlington  Industries,  J.P.Stevens  Co.,  R.J.  Reynolds  Co. 

44.  Interv  iew  with  author,  April  25, 1975. 

45.  Key,  op.  cit.,  p.  21 1. 

46.  Barnes,  loc.  cit.  See  also  "A  Troublesome  Legacy:  James  B.  Duke's  Bequest  to  His 
Cousins,"  The  \orth  Carolina  Historical  Review,  October  1973,  pp.  394  415. 

47.  "Public  Relations  Pointers,"  published  by  the  American  Textiles  Manufacturers 
Institute,  Charlotte,  January  1974. 

48.  "Back  to  the  Good  Old  Ways,"  special  edition  of  Duke  Power  Magazine,  1974,  p.  5. 

Four 

1.  Figures  released  by  the  North  Carolina  Board  of  Conservation  and  Development. 

2.  Figures  cited  in  interview  with  author  by  William  Coley,  industrial  developer  for 
Carolina  Power  &  Light  Co.,  May  21,  1974. 

3.  North  Carolina  Statewide  Development  Policy,  North  Carolina  Department  of 
Administration,  Raleigh,  March  1972,  pp.  3-45. 

4.  Author's  interview  with  Creed  Gilley,  April  24,  1974. 

5.  Interview  with  author  May  1,  1974. 

6.  "Report  on  Existing  Area  Survey,"  Carolina  Power  &  Light  Co.,  April  1974. 

7.  Author's  interview  with  William  Coley,  May  24,  1974. 

8.  Interview  with  author,  April  19,  1974. 


239 


Notes  pp.  142-148 


9.    Interviewwith author,  May  16,  1974. 

10.  "Report  on  Existing  Area  Survey,"  op.  cit. 

11.  Op.  cit. 

12.  See  Kenyon  Bertel  Segner  111,  A  History  of  the  Community  College  Movement  in 
North  Carolina,  1927-1963,  James Sprunt  Press,  Kenansville,  N.C.,  1974,  p.  v. 

13.  North  Carolina  Community  College  System,  Biennial  Report  1970-1971,  North 
Carolina  State  Board  of  Education,  Raleigh,  p.  5 1 . 

14.  North  Carolina  Community  College  System  Report  1963-70,  North  Carolina  State 
Board  of  Education,  Raleigh,  p.  87. 

15.  Terry  Sanford,  But  What  About  the  People?,  Harper  &  Row,  New  York,  1966,  p.  107. 

16.  Interview  with  the  author.  May  21,  1975. 

17.  "Glad  You  Asked  That,"  distributed  by  the  North  Carolina  Board  of  Education  in 
1974. 

18.  Ibid. 

1 9.  North  Carolina  Report,  op.  cit.,  pp.  22-28. 

20.  Emil  Malizia,  et.  al..  Earnings  Gap  in  North  Carolina,  North  Carolina  State  AFL- 
CIO,  Raleigh,  June  1975. 

21.  "North  Carolina  and  the  Southeast:  A  Bird's  Eye  Perspective  and  a  Future  Look," 
published  by  the  Wachovia  Bank  and  Trust  Co.,  Winston-Salem,  1 973,  p.  5. 

22.  General  Social  and  Economic  Characteristics,  1970  Census,  North  Carolina,  Wash- 
ington D.C.,  1972.  ( Hereafter,  1970  Census,  N.C.) 

23.  "Economic  Outlook  for  North  Carolina  in  the  1970s,"  a  speech  by  Wachovia  vice- 
president  M.N.  Hennessee.  1973,  p.  6. 

24.  Ibid.,  p.  8. 

25.  Statistics  quoted  by  Sol  Stetin,  then  general  president  of  the  Textile  Workers  Union 
of  America,  Daily  World,  June  17,  1975. 

26.  North  Carolina  Slate  Government  Statisical  Abstract,  second  edition,  Raleigh,  1973. 
p.  209  ( Hereafter  referred  to  as  Statistical  Abstract. ) 

27.  Ibid,  p.  220. 

28.  Klutzman,op.  cit.,  p.  5. 

29.  The  North  Carolina  Fund,  Annual  Review  1966,  Durham,  1967,  p.  B-14. 

30.  Ibid.,  pp.  A-LB-II. 

The  following  excerpted  story  from  a  North  Carolina  Fund  article,  "Domestics 
United:  An  Exercise  in  Free  Enterpirse,"  indicates  the  Fund's  approach  to  eradicating 
poverty:  "When  Domestics  United  first  appeared,  there  were  no  smiles  from  the  white 
housewives  of  Charlotte.  They  feared  a  maid's  'union'  that  would  make  militant 
demands  without  offering  high  quality  services  in  return.  Things  have  worked  out 
differently.  Higher  wages  and  more  benefits  are  indeed  the  goals  of  Domestics  United, 
but  better  service  rather  than  militant  action  is  to  be  the  means  of  getting  there.  For 
those  who  can  profit  by  training  and  show  their  dependability,  higher  wages  appear  to 
be  assured.  Says  M  rs.  Adams  [ Wilhelrnina  Adams,  president],  'We  have  people  who 
promise  to  pay  $  1 .40  an  hour  for  a  maid  who  has  had  real  training  in  domestic  skills.'" 
(Blue  Print  for  Opportunity,  The  North  Carolina  Fund,  Volume  3,  Number  3. 
November  1967,  p.  8.) 

31.  Michael  P.  Brooks,  The  Dimensions  of  Poverty  in  North  Carolina,  The  North 
Carolina  Fund,  Durham,  June  1964,  pp.  3-4. 

32.  North  Carolina's  Present  and  Future  Poor,  The  North  Carolina  Fund,  Durham, 
1 966,  p.  45. 

33.  1970  Census,  N.  C.  op.  cit. 

34.  Ibid. 

35.  Annual  Review  1966,  op.  cit.,  p.  B-1 1. 

36.  James  Baldwin,  op.  cit. 

37.  Annual  Review,  1966,  op.  cit.,  p.  B-14. 

38.  Jim  Burns,  "Dimensions  of  Poverty  in  North  Carolina,"  People,  published  by  State 
Department  of  Human  Resources,  Summer  1973. 


240 


Notes  pp.  148-169 

39.  Klutzman,  op.  cit.,p.  6. 

40.  Raleigh  Times,  April  27, 1 974. 

41.  Statistical  Abstract,  op.cit.,  p.  310. 

42.  Ibid.,  pp.  296-97. 

43.  Statistics  and  standards  stated  in  interviews  with  June  Stallings  and  with  Dr.  Rene 
Wescott,  director  of  social  services  division,  N.C.  Department  of  Human  Resources 
February  28, 1974. 

44.  Statistical  Abstract,  op.  cit.,pp.  80-86. 

45.  Adult  Services  in  North  Carolina,  special  report  number  16  of  N.C.  Department  of 
Human  Resources,  February  1973,  p. 4. 

46.  Public  Assistance  Trends  in  North  Carolina,  special  report  number  19,  N.C.  Depart- 
ment of  Human  Resources,  August  1973,  p.  33. 

47.  North  Carolina  Local  Health  Department  Budgetary,  Economic  and  Other  Pertinent 
Data,  Fiscal  Year  1972-1973,  January  1973,  p.  7. 

48.  Author's  interview  with  Dr.  Jacob  Kumen,  Director,  N.C.  Health  Department, 
February  27, 1974. 

49.  Communicable  Disease  Morbidity  Statistics,  1972,  N.C.  Department  of  Human 
Resources  Division  of  Health  Services,  Raleigh,  1973,  pp.  2-3, 2-2. 

50.  Statistical  Abstract,  op.  cit.,  p.  59. 

5 1 .  North  Carolina  Nutritional  Survey,  Part  One,  Raleigh,  1974. 

52.  Klutzman,  op.  cit.,  p.  6. 

53.  Wesley  George,  "The  Biology  of  the  Race  Problem,"  prepared  by  Commission  of  the 
Governor  of  Alabama,  1962. 

54.  Ibid.,  p.  18. 

55.  Ibid.,  pp.  22-23. 

56.  Ibid.,  p.  18. 

57.  Psychology  Today,  September  1972. 

58.  "Eugenical  Sterilization  in  North  Carolina,"  a  pamphlet  by  R.  Eugene  Brown, 
Eugenics  Board  Secretary,  issued  by  the  Board,  1938,  p.  3. 

59.  Ibid.,  p.  5. 

60.  Ibid.,  p.  9. 

61.  Published  by  the  N.C.  Eugenics  Board,  May  1948. 

62.  Ibid.,  p.  6. 

63.  Biannual  Reports,  1954-1968,  N.C.  Eugenics  Board. 

64.  Interview  with  author,  February  28,  1975. 

65.  See  Herbert  Aptheker,  "Racism  and  Human  Experimentation,"  Political  Affairs, 
January  and  February  1974,  for  a  Marxist  refutation  of  the  ideological  tenets  of 
"eugenics." 

66.  Ibid. 

67.  The  New  York  Times,  March  13, 1975. 

68.  New  York  Post,  April  10, 1974. 

69.  The  New  York  Times,  February  8, 1974. 

70.  New  York,  1972,  p.  2. 

71.  Quoted  by  Joseph  Reynolds,  "Behavior  Modification:  Psycho-Fascism  in  Disguise," 
Political  Affairs,  May  1974. 

72.  New  York>o5/.  March  18, 1972. 

73.  Psychology  Today.  April  1970. 

74.  The  New  York  Times,  February  15, 1974. 

75.  Testimony  before  House  Committee  on  Government  Operations,  "Hearings  on 
Federal  Involvement  in  the  Use  of  Behavior  Modification  Drugs  on  Grammar  School 
Children,"  9 1  st  Congress,  Second  session. 

Five 

I.   Charlotte  Observer,  July  3,  1975;  and  the  Daily  World,  August  29,  1975. 


241 


Notes  pp.  169-177 

2.  Statistical  Abstract,  op.  cit.,  p.  360. 

3.  Ibid.,  p.  355. 

4.  Author's  interview  with  David  Jones,  Secretary  of  the  N.C.  Department  of  Social 
Rehabilitation,  February  27, 1974. 

5.  The  figure  and  quotations  are  from  David  Jones,  A  New  Direction  on  Correction: 
Long-range  Construction  and  Conversion  Plan,  1974  1983,  North  Carolina  Depart- 
ment of  Corrections,  Raleigh,  1974,  pp.  1 , 3. 

6.  See  Jesse  F.  Steiner  and  Roy  M.  Brown,  The  North  Carolina  Chain  Gang,  Patterson 
Smith, Chapel  Hill,  1927, Chapter 2. 

7.  Ibid.,  pp.  12  13. 

8.  Ibid.,  p.  14. 

9.  Ibid.,  p.  15. 

10.  Ibid.,  p.  19. 

11.  Ibid.,  p.  24. 

12.  Ibid.,  p.  6. 

13.  Hodges. op.  cit.,  pp.  140  44. 

14.  "North  Carolina  and  the  Southeast,"  op.  cit.,  Appendix  A. 

15.  Mitford,op.cit.,p.228. 

16.  See  Steve  Carlson,  "Rehabilitation  or  Super  Exploitation?,"  World  Magazine, 
August  17, 1974. 

17.  Steve  Carlson,  "Super-Exploitation  in  the  Prisons,"  World  Magazine,  August  10, 
1974. 

1 8.  1 975  brochure  issued  by  the  State  of  North  Carolina. 

19.  Statistical  Abstract,  op.  cit.,  p.  357. 

20.  Author's  interview  with  Ralph  Edwards.  N.C.  Commissioner  of  Correction,  Febru- 
ar\28, 1974. 

21.  Ibid. 

22.  Ibid. 

23.  Jones, op. cit.. p.  I. 

24.  The  New  s  and  Observer,  February  21,1 974. 

25.  As  quoted  in  Mason  P.  Thomas,  Jr.,  Juvenile  Corrections  and  Juvenile  Jurisdiction, 
Institute  of  Government,  Chapel  Hill,  1972,  p.  4. 

26.  See  Tomorrow  in  Youth  Development  by  the  N.C.  Department  of  Social  Rehabilita- 
tion, 1973,  p.  7. 

27.  Ibid.,  p.  2. 

28.  Interview  with  the  author,  April  19, 1974. 

29.  T  homas,  op.  cit.,  p.  2. 

30.  Ibid.,  p.  3. 

31.  Ibid.,  p.  5. 

32.  Interview  with  Mason  Thomas,  op.  cit. 

33.  Thomas,  op.  cit..  p.  7. 

In  November  1973,  17-year-old  Allan  Foy  wrote  home  from  his  cell  in  maximum- 
security  Central  Prison:  "Mom  and  Dad,  can  1  please  come  home?  ...  1  can't  stand 
being  locked  up  anymore  and  it  won't  be  long  until  Christmas  and  it  would  not  be 
pleasant  at  all  to  be  here.  1  have  been  locked  up  so  many  Christmas  days  it's 
unforgetable.  1  just  can't  stand  it  any  longer."  Two  days  after  Christmas,  Allan  Foy 
was  dead,  killed  by  a  4,300-volt  electrical  barrier,  while  trying  to  escape  from  Central. 
Allan  Foy  was  serving  a  year-and-a-quarter  on  a  misdemeanor  charge  of  malicious 
damage,  for  having  broken  a  window  in  his  father's  store.  He  was  sent  to  prison 
"because  everybody  the  judge,  the  police  chief,  his  father  and  even  Allan  himself 
believed  it  was  the  only  place  he  could  get  help  for  his  mental  problems  .  .  .  "At  a 
pretrial  meeting  with  his  father,  the  chief  and  court-appointed  attorney  Earl  Collins, 
Allan  agreed  to  plead  guilty  with  the  understanding  that  he  receive  psychiatric  help. 
The  offenses  didn't  amount  to  a  hill  of  beans    certainly  not  enough  to  give  the  boy  an 


242 


Notes  pp.  177-195 


active  sentence,'  Collins  said.  'But  we  felt  this  was  the  only  way  to  make  sure  he  got 
help."  Collins  said  he  considered  having  the  boy  committed  to  a  state  mental  hospital 
by  judicial  order  but  'he  simply  wasn't  insane  enough.  He  was  a  boy  trying  to  find 
himself.' "( Charlotte  Observer,  January  13, 1974.) 

34.  Mason  P.  Thomas,  Jr.,  A  Summary  of  Legislation  Affecting  Juvenile  Corrections  by 
the  1973  General  Assembly,  Institute  of  Government,  Chapel  Hill,  1974,  p.  4. 

35.  Ibid.,  pp.  6-7. 

36.  As  the  Twig  is  Bent:  A  Report  on  the  North  Carolina  Juvenile  Corrections  System, 
prepared  by  the  North  Carolina  Bar  Association's  Penal  System  Study  Committee, 
Raleigh,  1972,  p.  18. 

37.  Author's  interview,  op.  cit. 

38     The  News  and  Observer,  August  4, 1 975. 

39.  The  prosecution's  use  of  hoods  like  Mitchell  and  Hall  in  the  Wilmington  10  and  Hood 
and  Washington  in  the  Charlotte  Three  and  Chavis-Grant  trials,  had  its  precedents  in 
the  frame-ups  of  labor  leaders  from  Gastonia  to  Henderson,  in  the  decades-long 
attempt  by  the  companies  and  the  state  to  break  the  working-class  movement.  Boyd 
Payton,  a  leader  of  the  Henderson  strike  in  1959,  writes  in  Scapegoat,  his  memoir  of 
the  strike,  his  trial  and  his  years  in  prison,  of  Harold  Aaron,  the  petty  crook  who 
became  a  "hero"  as  the  key  witness  against  the  union  leaders.  Payton  quotes  from  a 
local  news  story  of  the  time: 

"The  bravest  man  1  know.' 

"This  was  the  tribute  prosecutor  Robert  Hight  had  for  Harold  Aaron  more  than  a 
year  ago. 

"True,  Aaron's  testimony  had  just  sent  Boyd  Payton  and  seven  other  union  men  to  the 
penitentiary  in  the  Henderson  dynamite  conspiracy  trial. 

"But  it  was  a  peculiar  tribute,  just  the  same.  The  only  thing  Aaron  had  heard  from 
prosecutors  for  most  of  his  adult  life  had  been  ugly  charges  of  his  guilt  on  charges  of 
assault,  assault  with  deadly  weapons,  drunkenness,  reckless  driving,  theft,  larceny  of 
an  auto,  impersonation  of  an  officer,  etc. 

"But  this  time  Aaron,  as  a  paid  informer  of  the  State  Bureau  of  Investigation  and  with 
at  least  $1,1 00  [inflation  has  boosted  the  cost  of  informers,  as  it  has  gasoline  and  lamb 
chops,  in  the  ensuing  years  M .  M .]  of  taxpayer  funds  in  his  jeans,  was  to  bask  in  the 
role  of  H  ero  for  the  State."  ( p.  274. ) 

40.  Cash,  op.  cit.,  p.  247. 

41.  Quoted  in  George  B.  Tindall,  The  Emergence  of  the  New  South,  1913-1945,  Louisi- 
ana State  University  Press,  Baton  Rouge,  1967,  p.  345.  See  also  pp.  75, 3 1 8-77. 

42.  Broadus  Mitchell,  "Fleshpots  in  the  South,"  Virginia  Quarterly  Review,  111,  1927, 
p.  169. 

43.  Harry  M.  Douty, "The  North  Carolina  Industrial  Worker,  1880-1930,"  University  of 
North  Carolina  Ph.  D.  thesis,  1 936,  p.  343. 

44.  See  Tom  Tippett,  When  Southern  Labor  Stirs,  Jonathan  Cape  and  Harrison  Smith, 
New  York,  1931. 

45.  "The  Story  of  Gastonia,"  flyer  issued  by  the  International  Labor  Defense,  New  York, 
1929. 

46.  See  Samuel  Yellen,  American  Labor  Struggles,  1877-1934,  Monad  Press,  New  York, 
1974,  pp.  308-15. 

47.  Quoted  in  ibid.,  p.  3 10. 

48.  The  Nation,  September  25, 1 929. 

49.  Liston  Pope,  Millhands  and  Preachers,  Yale  University  Press,  New  Haven,  1965,  p. 
294. 

50.  Irving  Bernstein,  The  Lean  Years,  Houghton  Mifflin  Co,  Baltimore,  1966,  p.  27. 

51.  Werner  Jones,  "Southern  Labor  and  the  Law,"  The  Nation,  July  2,  1930,  as  quoted  in 
Pope,  op.  cit.,  p.  295. 

52.  The  Nation,  September  25, 1 929. 


243 


Notes  pp.  195-217 

53.  Cash,  op.  cit.,  pp.  303-04. 

54.  Sinclair  Lewis,  Cheap  and  Contented  Labor,  pamphlet  reprinted  and  distributed  by 
the  Asheville  Area  Central  Labor  Union,  no  date,  p.  18. 

55.  Yellen,  op.  cit.,  pp.  3 1 6-2 1 ;  also  Pope,  op.  cit.,  p.  349. 

56.  Ibid.,  p.  321. 

57.  Tindall,op.cit.,p.523. 

58.  Ibid.,  pp.  526-27. 

59.  Ibid.,  pp.  572-73,512. 

60.  Art  Shields,  "The  Reynolds  Strike  of  1947"  World  Magazine,  June 4, 1977. 

61.  Patterson,  op.  cit.,  p.  85. 

62.  Most  of  this  account  is  taken  from  George  Morris' column,  "World  of  Labor,"  Daily 
World,  July  13,  1974. 

63.  Author's  interview  with  Wilbur  Hobby,  president  of  the  N.C.  AFL-ClOand  a  former 
tobacco  worker,  April  18, 1974. 

64.  Interview  with  author,  April  23, 1974. 

65.  Herbert  R.  Northrup,  "The  Negro  in  the  Tobacco  Industry,"  in  Negro  Employment  in 
Southern  Industry,  by  H.R.  Northrup  and  Richard  Rowan,  University  of  Pennsyl- 
vania Press,  Philadelphia,  1970,  Study  49. 

66.  Interview  with  author,  April  25,  1974. 

67.  See  Nina  Bogomolova,  "Human  Relations"  Doctrine:  Ideological  Weapon  of  the 
Monopolies,  Progress  Publishers,  Moscow,  1973. 

68.  Ibid.,  p.  20. 

69.  Quoted  in  ibid.,  p.  60. 

70.  Robert  Dubin,  The  World  of  Work,  Prentice-Hall,  New  York,  1958,  p.  245,  as  quoted 
in  ibid.,  p.  91. 

71.  Ibid., p.  112. 

72.  Peter  Drucker,  The  New  Society,  the  Anatomy  of  Industrial  Order,  Harper  &  Row, 
New  York,  1962,  p.  283,  quoted  in  ibid.,  p.  93.  ' 

73.  News  release  issued  by  American  Textile  Manufacturers  Institute,  Charlotte,  Febru- 
ary 21,  1974. 

74.  Interview  with  author,  May  16,  1974. 

75.  Pope,  op.  cit.,  p.  298. 

76.  Ibid.,  p.  292. 

77.  Ibid.,  pp.  30-31. 

78.  Baltimore  Evening  Sun,  May  13,  1929,  quoted  in  ibid.,  p.  282. 

79.  Authors  interview  with  Professor  Daniel  Pollitt,  April  21,  1974. 

80.  Author's  interview  with  Duke  Endowment  spokesman  Robert  J.  Salstead,  April  25, 
1974. 

81.  Author's  interview  with  R.J.  Reynolds  vice-president  Charles  Wade,  April  23, 1974. 

82.  Letter  to  constituents  sent  out  on  the  letterhead  of  the  "Americans  Against  Union 
Control  of  Government,"  undated  1975. 

83.  See  Kenneth  M.  Jarin,  Earl  B.  Ruth,  Washington,  D.C.,  1972,  pp.  2-3. 

84.  North  Carolina  Public  Interest  Research  Group,  Caution:  North  Carolina  OS  HA 
May  Be  Hazardous  to  Your  Health,  Durham,  1976. 

85.  Quoted  in  The  Guardian,  October  16, 1974. 

86.  Action,  Durham,  April-May  1974. 

87.  Henry  P.  Leiferman,  Crystal  Lee:  A  Woman  of  Inheritance,  MacMillan,  New  York, 
1975,  pp.  46-49. 

88  .    The  New  York  Times,  May  25,  ! 976. 

89.  Ed  McConville,"How  7,041  Got  Fired  "  The  Nation,  October 25, 1975. 

90.  The  New  York  Times,  September  1 , 1977. 

91.  The  New  York  Times,  December  29, 1 977. 

92.  McConville,  op.  cit. 

93.  Richard  L.  Rowan,  "The  Negro  in  the  Textile  Industry,"  Northrup  and  Rowan,  op. 
cit. 


244 


Notes  pp.  217-233 

94.  The  New  York  Times,  J une  30, 1 976. 

95.  New  American  Movement,  November  1974. 

96.  Interview  with  author,  April  18,  1974. 

97.  Interview  with  author.  May  16.  1974. 

A  fterword 

I.  Helms,  whose  idea  of  a  man  of  vision  seems  to  be  someone  who  follows  him,  is 
something  of  a  human  divining-rod  insofar  as  Jimmy  Carter's  human-rights  princi- 
ples are  concerned.  While  the  gentlemen's  agreement  with  the  Justice  Department  was 
being  negotiated.  Carter's  State  Department  came  to  the  defense  of  the  fascist  regime 
in  Chile,  which  Helms  had  helped  bring  to  power.  Citing  the  fact  that  many  of  the 
functions  of  the  Chilean  secret  police,  DIN  A,  had  been  transferred  to  other  agencies, 
a  department  spokesman  said  that,  "The  image  regarding  human  rights  Chile  has 
generally  abroad  is  somewhat  distorted  and  somewhat  out  of  date."  The  transferred 
"functions"  that  went  unelaborated  upon  included  torture  and  murder  of  the  regime's 
opponents.  (Boston  Globe,  August  20,  1977.) 

Two  weeks  after  Helms'  plea  bargain  was  entered  in  court,  he  announced  the  opening 
of  his  new  consulting  firm  that  would  advise  U.S.  businessmen  on  matters  of  trade 
between  the  United  States  and  Iran.  The  new  company,  located  two  blocks  from  the 
White  House,  was  named  the  Safeer  Company.  In  Parsi,  the  Persian  language, 
"safeer"  means  "ambassador."  Helms  had  of  course  served  as  U.S.  ambassador  to 
Iran  following  his  resignation  from  the  CIA.  The  Iranian  regime,  perhaps  the  most 
barbaric  in  modern  times  if  gauged  in  terms  of  widespread  torture  and  political 
imprisonment,  was  brought  to  power  by  a  coup  d'etat  engineered  by  Helms'  col- 
leagues at  the  CIA. 

The  day  before  Helms  opened  his  business,  that  regime's  head  of  state,  the  Shah  of 
Iran,  was  welcomed  by  President  Carter  to  Washington.  The  President  praised  the 
Shah  for  maintaining  a  "strong,  stable  and  progressive  Iran"  under  his  leadership;  and 
apologized  to  the  dictator  for  "our  temporary  air  pollution  problem,"  referring  to  tear 
gas  lingering  in  the  White  House  air  after  the  police  dispersed  peaceful  anti-Shah 
demonstrators.  (The  New  York  Times,  Nov.  16,  17,  1977.) 


245 


Also  by  the  author 


These  Are  the  Good  Old  Days  (1970) 
Memories  of  Underdevelopment  (1973) 
Watergate:  Crime  in  the  Suites  (1973) 


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